A note from a reader: “It is now 9pm. For the past few months, about this time in the evening, I view a very bright “planet.” I face west and this object is descending pretty quickly. Two months ago I figured it was Jupiter, now I am told Jupiter will not appear until a few more...
City Comptroller Scott Stringer is pushing back against critics of his report, “The Impact of Airbnb on NYC Rents,” which was issued earlier this month, and concluded (among other allegations) that residents of Lower Manhattan who lease (rather than own) their apartments are collectively paying more than $49 million per year in extra rent as...
City Comptroller Scott Stringer: "Our report offered a sober, independent analysis of how Airbnb's growing presence in many of our neighborhoods has served to push rents up by increasing demand for housing."
567 BC – Servius Tullius, the king of Rome, celebrates a triumph for his victory over the Etruscans. 240 BC – First recorded perihelion passage of Halley’s Comet. 1521 – The Diet of Worms ends when Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, issues the Edict of Worms, declaring Martin Luther an outlaw. 1738 – A treaty...
Paris liberated from the Nazis. photo by Robert Capa
A rare copy of what is widely regarded as the first credible map of Lower Manhattan was recently sold at auction for $150,000. This was an edition of the “Ratzer Plan,” created in the late 1760s by British Army surveyor and cartographer Bernard Ratzer, who was ordered by General Thomas Gage to compile a detailed...
The map by Bernard Ratzer was the first comprehensive chart of New York ever produced.
1218 – The Fifth Crusade leaves Acre for Egypt. 1626 – Peter Minuit buys Manhattan. 1830 – “Mary Had a Little Lamb” by Sarah Josepha Hale is published. 1844 – Samuel Morse sends the message “What hath God wrought” (a biblical quotation, Numbers 23:23) from the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the United States Capitol...
A new online tool offers startlingly precise snapshots of public health, as measured by a wide range of metrics, at the neighborhood level through New York City, and yields some surprising findings for Lower Manhattan. The City Health Dashboard, which was created by a partnership between two arms of New York University — the Langone...
The City Health Dashboard breaks out data about public health by neighborhood using federal census districts. While the names of the 12 communities outlined are informal and somewhat arbitrary, the demarcations are not -- these are the boundaries used by government statisticians when analyzing demographic trends at the local level.
