Year: 2017

Onward and Upward with the Arts

Church Street School for Music and Art, which has operated highly regarded creative enrichment programs for Lower Manhattan kids for the last 27 years has found a new home. This represents a reprieve for the school, which has been buffeted by series of rent increases over the last decade, as its Tribeca neighborhood gentrified, that...

Pressing for Home Rule

Three Lower Manhattan elected officials have co-signed a letter to Governor Andrew Cuomo, calling upon him to sign a bill now on his desk, that would set aside two seats on the board of the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) to people who live in the community. The letter was sent on December 8, two...
State Assembly member Deborah Glick, who sponsored the bill to set aside for residents two Battery Park City Authority board seats in her house of the legislature.

Arcades or Their ‘Cades?

Today, the City Planning Commission (CPC) will vote on whether to approve a controversial plan to privatize almost 5,000 square feet of public space at 200 Water Street, where the building owner wants to enclose arcades — the columned porticos that adorn the ground-floor facades of more than a dozen Water Street buildings — to...
The former office tower (now a residential building) at 200 Water Street, where the owner is proposing to convert the open-air arcades -- along with part of the plaza -- at the street level into new, private retail space.

December 12

627 – Battle at Nineveh: Byzantine emperor Heraclius beats Perzen 1098 – First Crusaders capture and plunder Mara Syria 1791 – Bank of US opens 1792 – In Vienna, Ludwig Von Beethoven at the age of 22 receives first lesson in music composition from Franz Joseph Haydn 1915 – First all-metal aircraft (Junkers J-1) test...
Jerry Lee Lewis weds his cousin Myra Gale Brown, 13, while still married to his first wife Jane Mitchamr.

High, Wide, and Handsome

After 134 years, the Brooklyn Bridge may need some surgical enhancement. A report released Friday by the City’s Department of Transportation (DOT) notes that the span’s pedestrian and cycling deck is the No. 1 tourist attraction in Brooklyn and one of the top five in Manhattan. The report also documents that between 2008 and 2015,...

December 11

359 – Honoratus, first known Prefect of the City of Constantinople, takes office. 1620 – 103 Mayflower pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock 1792 – France’s King Louis XVI went on trial, accused of treason 1844 – First dental use of nitrous oxide, in Hartford, Connecticut 1866 – First yacht race across Atlantic Ocean 1913 –...
Bernie Madoff is an American fraudster and a former stockbroker, investment advisor, and financier.