Month: July 2017

Comparing Tipping Points

An analysis by the online real estate database company StreetEasy finds notable disparities among Lower Manhattan neighborhoods in the lengths of time that rental tenants would need to own the same apartment before breaking even. The report, by Grant Long, StreetEasy’s senior economist, defines this “tipping point” as, “the point in time in which the...
Renters who purchase an apartment in Battery Park City can expect to see the benefits of owning outweigh the costs (relative to continued renting) in just 4.3 years.

Today in History

1540 – Thomas Cromwell is executed at the order of Henry VIII of England on charges of treason. Henry marries his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, on the same day. 1854 – USS Constellation (1854), the last all-sail warship built by the United States Navy, is commissioned. 1866 – At the age of 18, Vinnie Ream becomes the first and youngest female...
Soldiers in gas masks advance on Bonus March demonstrators in Washington, D.C. 1932. The marchers were unemployed World War I veterans waiting for the monetary bonus promised by the government and not delivered.

EYES TO THE SKY July 24 – August 6, 2017

In parks, greenways and the countryside, feel the gentle air where fireflies lift, dip and blink to the bullfrog’s bellow and grey frog’s trill under a soft blue sky. Above the cityscape, too, half an hour after sunset, brilliant Jupiter is the first heavenly light turned on. While the sky is still blue, the planet...

July 26

1469 – Wars of the Roses: The Battle of Edgecote Moor, pitting the forces of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick against those of Edward IV of England, takes place. 1745 – The first recorded women’s cricket match takes place near Guildford, England. 1775 – The office that would later become the United States Post...
Disney's Alice in Wonderland premiere at Leicester Square Theatre, 1951.

Out of Context

A real estate developer wants to double the height of a historic Tribeca building, adding a several stories of glass-enclosed apartments to a brick structure dating from the 1920s. The building, at 50 Hudson Street (located on the corner of Thomas Street), is a legacy Tribeca’s industrial past: It was originally constructed as a headquarters,...
An architect's rendering of the glass-enclosed complex of penthouse apartments that has been proposed for 50 Hudson Street, in the midst of the Tribeca West Historic District.

July 25

1593 – Henry IV of France publicly converts from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. 1603 – James VI of Scotland is crowned king of England (James I of England), bringing the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland into personal union. Political union would occur in 1707. 1609 – The English ship Sea Venture, en route...
Operation Crossroads, a series of nuclear weapons tests conducted by the U.S. at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in 1946.