The BroadsheetDAILY News of Lower Manhattan 10/11/19

City to Reduce Speed Limit on West Side Highway Tomorrow

Beginning tomorrow (Saturday, October 12), the City’s Department of Transportation (DOT) will begin installing signs on the five-mile length of the West Side Highway between Battery Place and West 59th Street, to reduce the speed limit from 35 to 30 miles per hour.

According the DOT, there have been ten traffic fatalities on this stretch of road since 2013, among them three pedestrians, two cyclists, and five motor vehicle occupants. Injuries among all categories of street users have been consistent, at an average of about 300 per year. (These totals do not include the October 31, 2017 terrorist attack in which a truck deliberately rammed dozens of people on the bike path alongside the West Side highway, killing an additional eight people and injuring 12 more.) The DOT further notes that this stretch of the West Side Highway (also known as Route 9A) ranks among the highest in the City for the rate of motor vehicle occupants killed or seriously injured per mile, while the frequent incidence of rear-end crashes also strongly suggests that slower speeds will reduce injuries and accidents.

The scene at West and Laight Streets on the morning of December 29, 2018, after the crash that claimed the life of 57-year-old Amy Phillipson.

The agency argues that reducing vehicle speeds on any road where pedestrians and cyclists interact with motor vehicles increases the likelihood of crashes being survivable. But the change may have an especially pronounced upside in this case, because although the West Side Highway is designed like an urban boulevard — with medians, traffic signals and frequent crosswalks — it actually functions as a de facto connector between highways, bridges and tunnels. As a result, according to DOT statistics, drivers here often move closer to 40 miles per hour, a speed at which nearly 90 percent of pedestrian or cyclist crashes are fatal.

The scene at West and Chambers Street on June 11, 2016, after a drunk driver killed 30-year-old newlywed and triathlete Olga Cook.

	Rector Place resident (and recent New York University Law School graduate) Marilyn Feng, who was run over and killed by a drunk driver at West and Albany Streets on February 7, 2009. Her finance was seriously injured in the same incident.

Several of these fatalities have occurred in Lower Manhattan. In 2009, Rector Place resident Marilyn Feng was crossing West Street at Albany Street with her fiancé, Dennis Loffredo, when they were both hit by a drunk driver. Ms. Feng, a recent graduate of New York University Law School, was killed instantly, while Mr. Loffredo was seriously injured. (The driver, Martin Abreu, was convicted in 2010 of charges that included vehicular homicide, vehicular assault, and operating a vehicle while intoxicated. He was sentenced to serve as much as ten and a half years, but was released from prison in May, 2015, after serving five years and two months.) On June 11, 2016, 30-year-old newlywed and triathlete Olga Cook was killed by a drunk driver as she bicycled along the Greenway, near West and Chambers Streets. And 57-year-old Amy Phillipson was killed on December 29, 2018, at the corner of West and Laight Streets when a car being driven at more than 110 miles per hour by an emotional disturbed man slammed into hers, causing it to flip over and burst into flames.

DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg said, “with the growth of Hudson River Park and the Greenway, the country’s busiest bike path, never mind great gathering places like Chelsea Piers, it is quite clear that the old ‘West Side Highway’ is now more boulevard than highway — and this new speed limit reflects that evolution.”

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer said, “Hudson River Park has long been one of the most cherished green spaces in all of Manhattan. “Reducing the speed limit on Route 9A should make accessing the park a more pleasant and, more importantly, safe experience.”

Congressman Jerry Nadler said, “the reduction of speed on the West Side Highway by five miles per hour may not seem like a lot, but it cuts in half the chances of pedestrians dying from being hit by a vehicle. We must make our streets safer for pedestrians and reduce the tragic loss of life that is too often the result of dangerous driving. The West Side Highway is not some interstate highway in a rural area, but a boulevard street in Manhattan that is adjacent to a park, pedestrian walkway and bike path.”

City Council member Margaret Chin observed, “here in Lower Manhattan, we have long advocated for improved safety measures along the West Side Highway. By curbing the high-speed, dangerous traffic at three critical junctures, increasing pedestrian crossing times and improving signal times, the DOT is showing they understand the urgency of the situation.”

Fraunces Tavern Celebrates 300 Years

Peter C. Hein, President of the Sons of the Revolution in the State of New York welcomed the crowd and toasted Fraunces Tavern

It’s not often you get invited to a 300th birthday party.

Last week, Fraunces Tavern and Fraunces Tavern Museum celebrated the 300th anniversary of the construction of the building at 54 Pearl Street that would become Fraunces Tavern. The museum also highlighted its new exhibition “A Monument to Memory: 300 Years of Living History.”

Built around 1719 as a private residence for  a merchant Stephan Delancey, the building has played various roles in American history.

In 1762, Samuel Fraunces bought the building and turned it into a tavern and colonial meeting place. During the Revolutionary War, it served as Washington’s headquarters, and housed the first offices for the Departments of War, Treasury and Foreign Affairs.

Ambrose Richardson (former SRNY President), Tom Rogers (SRNY Treasurer), Peter C. Hein and Ray Manning (SRNY Vice President)

The Sons of the Revolution took control of the building in 1904, and reconstructed it in 1907. That year, it reopened as a restaurant and, on the upper floors, a museum. Today, Fraunces Tavern Museum and Fraunces Tavern (managed by the Porterhouse Brewing company) keep extraordinary American history alive at the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets.

Click to watch monarch butterflies feeding on milkweed planted by the Battery Park City Authority to help them on their annual fall migration from Canada to the mountains of Mexico.  To read more…

Thank you, kind-hearted gardeners. We must all do whatever little bit we can to hold back the wave of extinctions that is a hair’s breadth from taking the last of our monarchs.

Residents Riled about Tribeca Tavern

	Does this look like a dance club?

More than a dozen concerned Tribeca residents turned out for the September meeting the Licensing and Permits Committee, which weighs in on the granting or renewal of liquor licenses.

They showed up to voice concerns about MI-5, a bar located at 52 Walker Street, which has been a source of local complaints as far back 2007.

Neighbors of the bar allege that it operates as a dance club (in violation of its current license, which is now up for renewal), and that loud music penetrates the upper floors of the residential building located above the bar as late as 4:00 am. To read more…

City Agency Leaves Cash-Strapped Local Museum Off Roster of Cultural Institutions

The City’s Department of Cultural Affairs has omitted from its list of dozens of New York-based cultural institutions that receive public support the museum that chronicles the oldest community anywhere in the five boroughs.

Since the 1870s, City Hall has maintained a roster of museums and arts groups located on publicly owned land, which are earmarked for tax-payer subsidies. This relationship began with the American Museum of Natural History, and has been updated recently enough to include new entrants like the Museum of Jewish Heritage, in Battery Park City, along with more than 30 other organizations.

But DCA has never included on this list the South Street Seaport Museum, which is the historical repository of New York’s first neighborhood, the colonial port and fishing village that grew up around the first Dutch settlement in what is now Lower Manhattan, starting in 1625.

BPCA Puts the Brakes on Conversions of Rental Buildings within Community

Lower Manhattan’s Old Syrian Quarter

This map from 1899 highlights  “Little Syria”

Today, the stretch of Greenwich and Washington Streets between Battery Place and Albany Street — bisected by the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel entrance — is known by the forgettable name, “Greenwich South.”

By all appearances it is an orphan of a neighborhood that never quite coalesced. But nothing could be further from the truth. A century ago, before the World Trade Center or the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel (the two giant public works projects that decimated this once-thriving quarter), it was an ethnic enclave as vibrant as Little Italy or Chinatown. To read more…

The ubiquitous chainlink fence has become a canvas for local artist Wendy Friedman. The artist ran out of workspace now that she rents her loft, SoHoSoleil, for corporate meetings and photoshoots. She said, “A fence around an empty lot on Grand Street was perfect. Flowers, waves and whirligigs now grace the fence; smashed tin food containers form a superhero skeleton. Imaginary animals delight children, tourists, and neighbors.”

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Mechanical pocket and wristwatches sought and sometimes repaired

Local Leaders Urge Preservation of Justice Complex

	The New Deal-era Criminal Courts Building at 100 Centre Street is widely regarded as a historic treasure, but does not enjoy any legal protection that would prevent it from being sold, demolished, and replaced by a skyscraper.

The case of 100 Centre Street takes on special urgency in this context, because, as the CB1 resolution notes, “the Manhattan Criminal Court building shares the same underlying City lot with the south tower of the Manhattan Detention Complex. This appears to mean that if City Hall needed extra space for the proposed new jail, it would face no legal obstacle in demolishing all or part of the historic building.

Costs to Rent or Own in Lower Manhattan Are Matched by Lofty Local Earnings

A slew of recent reports documents what everyone who lives or works in Lower Manhattan already sensed in their bones: This is a mind-numbingly expensive place to call home.

In September, RENTCafé issued a new analysis of the most expensive neighborhoods for renters in the United States that finds northern Battery Park City (zip code 10282) is the priciest enclave in America, with an average rent of $6,211 per month.  Coming in at second place is zip code 10013, which covers western Tribeca, along with part of Soho.  To read more…

GRRR | Brad Greenwood

“GRRR is the noise of the street, the buzz-saw of the news cycle, the constant low growl in the throat. What is it like to try to live peacefully, contentedly, lovingly while the animals roar? Can there be quiet in the midst of these troubling noises?  ~  Brad Greenwood

New Arts Center on Governors Island Will Provide Studio Space and Cultural Programming

	The historic building at Soissons Landing at  Governors Island.

Lower Manhattan has a new cultural hub. The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Trust for Governors Island have partnered to create the LMCC Arts Center at Governors Island, a 40,000-square foot studio space and education facility, housed within a restored 1870s ammunition warehouse — a relic from the days when the island was a military outpost.

CB1 Makes Exception to New Policy; Okays Naming Street for Former NYPD Commissioner

	Baxter Street

A public figure from the 1980s may soon be honored by having a street co-named in his memory, if Community Board 1 gets its way. The panel recommended that Benjamin Ward, New York’s first African-American police commissioner, be commemorated by rechristening one block of Baxter Street as Benjamin Ward Way.

This comes on the heels of a controversial decision by CB1 in 2018 to decline such a request on behalf of James D. McNaughton, who, on August 2, 2005, at age 27, became the first New York City Police officer to be killed in action while serving in “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

National Lighthouse Museum

 200 The Promenade at Lighthouse Point, Staten Island

Battery Park City Resident Charged with Two Home Invasions, and Sexual Abuse

Onetime Non-Profit Nursing Facility Sold to Anonymous Buyer for Five Times Original Price

	Rivington House

If there is an Exhibit A in the case of fevered speculation in Lower Manhattan real estate, it must be Rivington House

After purchasing the block-long, 150,000-square-foot structure (located at 45 Rivington Street, near the Williamsburg Bridge), the developer, the Allure Group, paid the City an additional $16 million to remove the deed restriction that limited the property to its legacy use of non-profit, residential healthcare. To read more…

Composting Catches on in Battery Park City

	Jake Jacevicius and Joshua DeVoto of BPCA parks operations dump out a binful of fruit and vegetable scraps where the neighborhood’s composting process takes place.

You’re probably heard of the farm-to-table movement. Thanks to the Battery Park City Authority’s compost initiative, there’s a burgeoning table-to-earth movement in this Lower Manhattan community.

City Transportation Study Finds That Lower Manhattan Bus Service Is Among Most Sluggish in Five Boroughs

	Bus speeds in Lower Manhattan average below eight miles per hour

The annual New York City Mobility Report, produced by the City’s Department of Transportation, contains two data points that will come as no surprise residents of Lower Manhattan. The first of these is that the median speed for Downtown bus service ranks among the slowest of any community in the five boroughs. And the second is that this creeping pace is, if anything, getting creepier. To read more…

	In an instant, both wagon and horse were vaporized, and the closest automobile was tossed twenty feel in the air. Incredibly, the iconic bronze of George Washington surveys the devastation from the steps of the Sub-Treasury without so much as a scratch.

As the noon hour approached on a fall Thursday morning in 1920, a horse-drawn wagon slowly made its way west down Wall Street toward “the Corner,” the high-powered intersection of Wall and Broad. Its driver came to a gentle stop in front of the Assay Office, where stockpiles of gold and silver were stored and tested for purity. But theft was not his motive.

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Many ships pass Lower Manhattan on their way to and from the Midtown Passenger Ship Terminal.  Others may be seen on their way to or from piers in Brooklyn and Bayonne.  Stated times, when appropriate, are for passing the Colgate clock in Jersey City, New Jersey, and are based on sighting histories, published schedules and intuition. They are also subject to tides, fog, winds, freak waves, hurricanes and the whims of upper management.