On a shelf in his flat over a famous Manhattan restaurant, we spot a photo of a youngish Green strolling in Corsica in the mid-seventies with an elegant older woman whose hand partially obscures her face in an attempt to block the camera.  She, Sam explains (as if he needs to), was one of his dearest friends, the late Greta Garbo.  When a passerby would notice them together on the street in Manhattan and stop, Green would tell the great actress (perhaps the first reclusive victim of hyper-celebrity), "We've got a customer." His tapes of their respectfully preserved conversations have been bequeathed to Wesleyan University's archives to avoid any chance of exploitation.
   In a way, Green's relationship with Garbo can be seen as an extension of his work - protecting precious treasures.  Green is the creator and driving force behind the Landmarks Foundation Protecting Ancient Sacred Sites Globally, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to saving and preserving objects of cultural significance worldwide.
   Green's home is an intimate museum, a repository of pieces collected on countless trips to the four corners of the globe.  On a comfortably worn Biedermeier desk rests a porcelain urn with a rendering of the Nile.  A ten-foot tall 16th-century gold-leaf Thai Buddha seems to hold up the ceiling at one end of Green's apartment, which has the feeling of an eccentric English hall - handsomely eclectic.  Intriguing Aztec, Olmec and 18th Dynasty Egyptian trinkets crowd the top of a colorful 17th-century Japanese Coromandel cabinet, a family piece.
   Samuel Adams Green is a descendant of the Boston beer manufacturer (and two presidents), a fact often confirmed to curious checkout clerks and waiters when he presents his credit card.  His parents were both college professors; his father literally wrote the book on American art and architecture (American Art.  An Historical Survey).  After an undistinguished academic career of his own, young Green landed a position as the director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania during the early sixties.  There, he gave Andy Warhol his first retrospective.  Recalling the evening, Green's face registers faux horror at the potential disaster: Opening night, he recalls, was so crowded that Warhol, Edie Sedgwick and Green had to be rescued from a balcony by the police department, who cut through the ceiling to lower a ladder.

ANDY WARHOL, EDIE SEDGWICK AND GREEN
HAD TO BE RESCUED FROM A BALCONY
BY THE POLICE DEPARTMENT ...

   (In his book Popism, Warhol gives his own version of the event.) Green points out a small, rare early self-portrait of the artist that hangs in his richly paneled entrance foyer.
   Among the many other pieces, one easily overlooked photo on the way to a commodious seating area depicts John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Green at the Carter inauguration gala.  Green later curated the reclusive musicians' private Egyptian collection.
   His silver-white hair and beard cropped neatly, Green wears a nattily mismatched Burberry tweed jacket and tartan vest during the afternoon of my visit.  He invites me to sit on a banquette against the far wall, topped with jungle bronzes of dancers from Sri Lanka.  He retreats onto one of his grandmother's French Provincial high-back chairs, and settles in to tell me about the foundation he established in 1996 with philanthropists Sandra Payson and Caroline Newhouse.  The hands-on organization presently consists of a small off ice with a computer, fax machine, one assistant, three volunteers, some funding and a lot of heart.
   A self-professed "tireless traveler to ancient sites,' Green says his first role as savior stemmed from his appointment by New York mayor John Lindsay in the late sixties as cultural consultant to New York City.  He curated numerous outdoor sculpture shows in parks and plazas citywide.
   In 1968, when, quite unbelievably, Lan Chile airlines and Air France were planning to bulldoze part of Easter Island (perhaps one of the finest sites of ancient indigenous sculpture) to create a mid-Pacific refueling station for transoceanic airplanes, Green and actress Yvette Mimieux, among others, hurriedly traveled there.  Green had been contacted by retired U.S. Army colonel James Gray, the high-minded founder of the International Fund for Monuments, who asked Green to help bring attention to the impending archaeological and anthropological disaster.
   Green took a position as special projects director with Gray's organization and, working with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), helped to divert a cargo plane from Vietnam to transport one of the sculptures to Park Avenue's Seagram's Plaza, where he arranged to have it set on a pedestal designed by Philip Johnson.  With his experience moving statues for the city, he managed to close the 59th Street Bridge and two lanes of Park Avenue while trucking in the hand-carved five-ton head.  The stunt generated plenty of publicity, enough, at least, to stop the bulldozers: funds were raised to expand the University of Wyoming archaeological study of the island by professor William Molloy, and under UNESCO rules, all commercial development was halted.
   Years later, during the 1970s, Green was traveling on a plane that broke down in Cartagena, Colombia, where he ended up purchasing and refurbishing a 16th-century nobleman's palace that was then a boarding house to 32 families.  'At that time, there were no antiques in that part of South America," he recalls.  'When they had wanted the Spanish look in Hollywood during the 1920s, they simply Spanish look in Hollywood during the 1920s, they simply raped Latin America and shipped whole houses - staircases and chandeliers - through the Panama Canal." When this style fell out of favor during the minimalist seventies, Green stalked Los Angeles auctions and shipped the treasures back.  His Cartagena home soon became a regular stop on the international jet-set circuit, hosting, among others, Garbo, Ono, Cecil Beaton, Cecile de Rothschild, David Byrne, Maria Niarcos, Fred Hughes, Franco Rossellini, Gianni Agnelli and Kerry, Mary and Bobby Kennedy.
   More recently, in 1996, Green organized an archaeological conference in Ani, Turkey, a site of important Gothic architecture that had been "badly" preserved.  "They were pouring portland cement on top of the ancient walls - the worst thing imaginable - and the Turkish army had used it for target practice," Green laments.  During the conference, preservation experts, engineers and archaeologists from the United States, Italy and France reinforced the importance of the site and taught the Turks modern preservation techniques.  Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, an accomplished photographer, made a record of the city and the conference. The concrete pouring ceased, and the military aimed its bullets elsewhere.
   Southwest of Ani, also in Turkey, is Patara, a town founded by the Lycians on the Mediterranean coast that was later a Greek city and a Roman provincial capital.  There, Green's foundation has cleared the land (for restoration access) around a small Hellenistic temple of Corinthian marble in jeopardy of imminent collapse.  Project completion awaits additional funds.
   'We specialize in sacred places that no longer have anybody to protect them," says Green, ice clinking in his tall cut-crystal glass.  'if a highway were about to go through a site, we'd stop that.'
   On the face of it, the claim seems rather grand, and I question whether a handful of people can stop the encroachment of modern society on sites that were chosen for their natural grandeur back when, shall we say, real estate was more readily available.
   "Sometimes it's more simple than you'd think," Green explains.  He tells me about the pilgrimage route of the Huichol Indians, spiritual descendants of the Aztecs, through Mexico's western Sierra Madre: "For thousands of years, these people have been following the same trail of about 500 kilometers.  But recently, ranchers have put up fences.  We're simply raising money to install gates in these fences.  We only need to find about $20,000 more."
   The rest of our armchair travels are inspired by a single stack of remarkable pictures that depict a sparkling white wedding cake of a marble graveyard called La Reina in Cienfuegos, Cuba.  In the photos, giant fuel tanks loom precariously behind the statues and mausoleums.  Local occult practices and exposure to the elements, however, are the real problem.  'Great artistry went into this resting place, and we'd simply like to secure the statues on their pedestals and gate the location to protect it from 'religious vandalism,"' he says.  Though Green has been cleared to enter and leave the country, current political considerations have recently placed this project on hold.
   I have finished my drink, and, regretfully - I could soak up ancient lore until I myself become a relic - I am up-to-date about the foundation's progress.  I sense that the audience has ended, and we both stand.  Near the front door, I notice a chair stacked with archaeological tomes and picture books about the Ionian Islands.  I can't help but imagine that the neatly constructed piles must be reminiscent of ones built by his father, who was at one time the director of the Rhode Island Historical Society.  Green sees me looking at the texts and explains that he is in the midst of packing for a three week trip to the North Sea area off Scotland.  He will be inspecting the condition of prehistoric temple-height stone monuments set in circles with dolmens (lesser Stonehenges).  "They tend to get in the way of modern farming machinery, and locals are inclined to topple them."

Jeffrey Sionim is a contributing editor at Allure, Elle Decor and Detour Magazine.  He also writes two weekly columns for the New York Daily News.