Year: 2017

For Literary Lions, with Cubs

When asked to reflect on the Lion’s Head, the legendary West Village tavern, newspaperman Pete Hamill once disputed its reputation as a bar for writers with drinking problems, insisting instead that, “it’s a bar for drinkers with writing problems.” Something similar might be said for Pen Parentis, the Lower Manhattan-based, literary nonprofit that is not...
Parent writers at a recent Pen Parentis Salon, Helen Wan, Karl Jacoby, Shani Gilchrist, and curator Christina Chiu

March 2

537 – Siege of Rome: The Ostrogoth army under King Vitiges begins the siege. Belisarius conducts a delaying action outside the Flaminian Gate; he and a detachment of his bucellarii are almost cut off. 1498 – Vasco da Gama’s fleet visits the Island of Mozambique. 1657 – Great Fire of Meireki: A fire in Edo...
The Flying Fortress Lucky Lady ll landing after her round-the-world non-stop flight

A Quarrel of Sparrows

This gathering of sparrows, apparently seeking the fellowship of their own kind as solace against the rigors of winter, struck us as an apt metaphor for contentious times, and made us wonder whether humans couldn’t learn something from the example of feathered friendship. This, in turn, made us curious about the collective name for a...

An Atlas That’s Nothing to Shrug About

The Downtown Alliance has created an interactive, three-dimensional map of Lower Manhattan that zooms, swoops, pivots, and performs other visual acrobatics, while also searching through multiple data sets, such as residential, office, and hotel properties, as well as restaurants, retailers, transit facilities, cultural institutions, and parks. This convergence of information and imagery, known as LM3D...
LM3D, the new interactive, digital map from the Downtown Alliance, allows users to visualize information from multiple databases, and form a comprehensive picture of a community in flux.

March 1

293 – Emperor Diocletian and Maximian appoint Constantius Chlorus and Galerius as Caesars. This is considered the beginning of the Tetrarchy, known as the Quattuor Principes Mundi (“Four Rulers of the World”). 1562 – Sixty-three Huguenots are massacred in Wassy, France, marking the start of the French Wars of Religion. 1565 – The city of...
Yellowstone National Park is a nearly 3,500-sq.-mile wilderness area atop a volcanic hot spot. Mostly in Wyoming, the park spreads into parts of Montana and Idaho.

Flip This Hotel

The gold rush in Lower Manhattan real estate continues to make fortunes for those invest here, but much less of a difference in the lives of people who live or work here. The most recent case in point is the Courtyard New York Marriott Downtown, at 133 Greenwich Street (near the corner with Thames Street),...
The new hotel at 133 Greenwich Street was recently sold by its developers for a profit of $183 million.