Sword Attack at World Trade Center Station Causes Stampede
A surveillance video image of the unidentified suspect in Thursday’s sword attack on the A train, in Lower Manhattan.
Amid fears of rising crime, a man with a sword attacked a subway rider on Thursday morning, at the Chambers Street station of the A train.
Police representatives say that shortly after 9am, an unknown suspect got into a verbal altercation with another rider. When both passengers exited the northbound A train at the World Trade Center station, one of the men (who can be seen on surveillance video carrying a long wooden sheath) brandished a heavy sword, approximately the size of a machete, and smashed its handle into the top of the head of the victim, 29-year-old Larry Griffin, who receive a deep laceration on his skull.
The suspect (who has not been identified and remains at large) then dropped the sword and fled from the subway. The incident triggered a panicked stampede among riders, which appears to have caused no additional injuries.
This was not Mr. Griffin’s first brush with trouble in the subways. In 2019, he was arrested for planting two pressure cookers in the Fulton Transit complex, which triggered an evacuation, based on the assumption that these were bombs. He was later charged with the felony of planting of hoax explosive device, for which he was imprisoned and remains on probation.
Matthew Fenton
Preserving the Patrimony
Concerns about Plan to Obscure Legally Protected Architectural Details
Plans to alter the lobby of an Art Deco masterpiece at 70 Pine Street have spurred Community Board 1 (CB1) to urge the City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) to veto the proposal. At issue is the desire of the developer who owns the building to “activate” the space by creating interior entrances to the storefronts that face the street, and then using the lobby to house additional seating. Read more…
A Very Lucrative Landmark
Private Space in a Publicly Owned Building Seeks Expansion of Expensive (and Exclusive) Club
Community Board 1 (CB1) is casting a skeptical eye on plans to expand a rooftop private club space at the historic Battery Maritime Building, located at 20 South Street. Read more…
A Report Card on Resiliency
A Decade After Sandy, Comptroller Says Downtown Is Farther Ahead Than Other Communities, But Still Lagging
A report from New York City Comptroller Brad Lander released late last week says that resiliency plans for Lower Manhattan are farther along than the rest of the City, but still less than halfway to completion. Read more…
Governors Island; start at Colonels Row, Building 404A
Scavenger hunt presented by Flux Factory in which artworks will be hidden across Governors Island in secret locations. Cryptic clues on a treasure map will guide visitors to their destinations. Works will include site-specific sculpture, performance, video, AR, and more. Free.
Paint in watercolor or use pastels and other drawing materials to capture the vistas of the Hudson River and the landscape of South Cove. An educator will offer instruction and critique. Materials provided. Free.
At Pumpkin Point, Governors Island’s annual pumpkin patch and fall festival, visitors are invited to pick out their own pumpkins (free with suggested donation). Arts and crafts, story-telling, magic shows, puppetry.
For centuries, schooners carrying goods down the Hudson River from upstate docked at South Street Seaport, to distribute their cargo to local markets or to transfer their cargo onto ocean-bound ships to more distant destinations. This trade, and the industries it supported, from banking to warehousing to printing, helped make New York City into a global commercial and then cultural capital. Apollonia is the Hudson Valley’s carbon-neutral, wind-powered merchant vessel that harkens back to these earlier times. Come and chat with the captain and crew.
Behind-the-scenes tour of 1885 tall ship Wavertree. Built of riveted wrought iron, Wavertree is an archetype of the sailing ships of the latter half of the 19th century that, during the “age of sail,” lined South Street by the dozens, creating a forest of masts from the Battery to the Brooklyn Bridge. Seaport Museum staff and crew will take you to places around the ship not typically accessible to the general public. Also at 2pm and 4pm. Free.
Gallery talks about the historic steam-powered lighthouse tender docked at Pier 25, plus a book signing (111 Places for Kids on New York that You Must Not Miss). Learn about the ongoing restoration of this special vessel. Free.
Wednesdays and Saturdays, 8am-3pm (compost program: Saturdays, 8am-1pm)
Bowling Green Greenmarket
Broadway & Whitehall St
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 8am-5pm (compost program: 8am-11am)
World Trade Center Oculus Greenmarket
Tuesdays, 8am-5pm (ending this month)
The Outdoor Fulton Stall Market
91 South Street, between Fulton & John Streets
Indoor market: Monday through Saturday,11:30am-5pm
CSA pick-up: Thursday, 4pm-6pm; Friday, 11:30-5pm
Outdoor market: Saturdays, 11:30am-5pm
Today in History
October 21
USS Constitution, today docked at the Boston Navy Yard. This wooden-hulled U.S. Navy frigate was launched October 21, 1797. Constitution is noted for action during the War of 1812, when she captured merchant ships and defeated British warships. Also known as Old Ironsides, Constitution is the world’s oldest ship afloat. She was retired from active service in 1881, and last sailed under her own power in 2012. Photograph by Yuhan Zhang.
1097 – In the First Crusade, crusaders led by Godfrey of Bouillon, Bohemund of Taranto, and Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse, begin the Siege of Antioch.
1520 – Ferdinand Magellan discovers a strait now known as Strait of Magellan.
1797 – In Boston Harbor, the 44-gun, wooden-hulled, three-masted U.S. Navy frigate USS Constitution is launched.
1824 – Joseph Aspdin patents Portland cement.
1854 – Florence Nightingale with a staff of 38 nurses is sent to the Crimean War
1867 – The Medicine Lodge Treaty is signed by southern Great Plains Indian leaders. The treaty requires Native American Plains tribes to relocate to a reservation in western Oklahoma.
1940 – The first edition of the Ernest Hemingway novel For Whom the Bell Tollsis published.
1945 – Women are allowed to vote in France for the first time.
1959 – In New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, opens to the public.
1959 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower transfers Wernher von Braun and other German scientists from the U. S. Army to NASA.
1966 – 116 children and 28 adults die as a coal waste heap slides and engulfs a school in Aberfan, South Wales
1983 – The metre is defined at the seventeenth General Conference on Weights and Measures as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
2017 – Spanish government suspends Catalonia’s autonomy.
Births
1687 – Nicolaus I Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician and theorist (d. 1759)
1833 – Alfred Nobel, Swedish chemist and engineer, invented dynamite and founded the Nobel Prize (d. 1896)
1917 – Dizzy Gillespie, trumpet player, composer, and bandleader (d. 1993)
1927 – Howard Zieff, American director and photographer (d. 2009)
1980 – Kim Kardashian
Deaths
1969 – Jack Kerouac, novelist and poet (b. 1922)
1984 – François Truffaut, actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1932)
2012 – George McGovern, historian, lieutenant, and politician (b. 1922)
2014 – Ben Bradlee, editor, journalist and newspaper executive (Washington Post), dies at 93
