Year: 2017

Governors Island Opens Early This Year

Governors Island, Lower Manhattan’s answer to Central Park, will open a month early this year, on Monday May 1. An all-too-brief ferry ride from the Battery Maritime Building (adjacent to the Staten Island Ferry terminal) brings you to the 172-acre island, with its shady lawns, historic forts, hammocks and picnic tables, gardens, goats and miniature...

April 26

1478 – The Pazzi family attack Lorenzo de’ Medici and kill his brother Giuliano during High Mass in Florence Cathedral. 1564 – Playwright William Shakespeare is baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England (date of actual birth is unknown). 1607 – English colonists make landfall at Cape Henry, Virginia. 1721 – A massive earthquake devastates the Iranian...
I.M. Pei 100 years old today!

Stage Fright

Downtown will get to keep a cultural mainstay that was slated to lose, thanks to the personal intervention of Julie Menin, the City’s commissioner of the Mayor’s Office and Media and Entertainment, who is also a former chair of Community Board 1. Soho Repertory Theatre (also knows as Soho Rep.) is a leading theater company...
A production of "Duat", by playwright Daniel Alexander Jones, produced last fall by the Soho Repertory Theater, which was facing the possibility of having to leave its longtime home in Tribeca.

April 25

1449 – Anti-pope Felix V resigns 1507 – Geographer Martin Waldseemuller first used name America 1684 – Patent granted for thimble 1792 – Guillotine first used in France, executes highwayman Nicolas J Pelletier 1850 – Paul Julius Reuter, use 40 pigeons to carry stock market prices 1859 – Ground broken for Suez Canal 1861 –...
Jane Jacobs, chairman of the Committee to save the West Village holds up documentary evidence at press conference at Lions Head Restaurant at Hudson and Charles Streets.

Bullets Fly on Battery Place

Gunfire erupted near the corner of Battery Place and Washington Street shortly after local schools had let out on Monday afternoon. At least one innocent bystander, a woman in her 30s whose name has not been released, was wounded when a stray bullet struck her in the ankle. A second man sustained a gunshot wound...

April 24

1184 BC – The Greeks enter Troy using the Trojan Horse (traditional date). 1066 – Halley’s Comet sparks English monk to predict country will be destroyed 1800 – Library of Congress establishes with $5,000 allocation 1833 – Jacob Evert and George Dulty patent first soda fountain 1872 – Volcano Vesuvius erupts 1888 – Eastman Kodak...
Designed by Cass Gilbert, the Woolworth Building was the tallest in the world when it opened. It remained the tallest for 17 years, until the construction of 40 Wall and the Chrysler Buildings in 1930