Lower Manhattan’s Local News
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To the Vector…
Lower Manhattan’s Position as a Nexus Belies Modest Local Infection Tally
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The buildings at 32 and 42 Broadway, where the City’s Board of Elections is headquartered, has become a local hotspot for the pandemic coronavirus, with 15 staff members testing positive for the disease.
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A Lower Manhattan office building has emerged as a local hotspot for the pandemic coronavirus, which underscores Lower Manhattan’s status as junction for the City as a whole. In a story first reported by Gothamist, 15 employees of the City’s Board of Elections (which occupies a seventh-floor suite spanning two adjoining buildings, at 32 and 42 Broadway, near Bowling Green) have tested positive for the disease. Two staff members at the Board of Elections have died from the virus, while a third employee has also succumbed, with that death not yet directly attributed to the outbreak.
This development comes in the wake of multiple recent bulletins that workers in numerous other Lower Manhattan offices — among them Brookfield Place, the New York Stock Exchange, 100 Church Street (a building that houses multiple City and State agencies), the NYPD’s First Precinct, and Police Headquarters, as well as the U.S. Attorney’s Office (next door to the NYPD’s headquarters building) — have all been diagnosed with the disease. In a related disclosure, multiple inmates at the federal jail in Lower Manhattan, the Metropolitan Correction Center (located on Park Row) have also tested positive for the virus.
These reports contrast with the City’s release last week of infection data broken down by zip code, which showed that a total of 309 residents of Lower Manhattan (among 724 who have been tested) are confirmed to have been infected by the pandemic coronavirus. Relative to the size of Downtown’s population, this ranks as among the lowest infection rates anywhere in the five boroughs.
But City officials have yet to release data about infection rates correlated to places of work, rather that the home addresses of patients. This may become a crucial indicator, because (prior to the directives that advised most businesses to shut down in recent weeks) Lower Manhattan has always been a crossroads for the City as a whole. According to data from the Downtown Alliance, 6.4 percent of all the City’s private-sector jobs (or slightly more than 250,000 postings) are located in the square mile of Lower Manhattan. This means that slightly more than one in 20 workers employed in all industries throughout the five boroughs were reporting to work each day somewhere south of Chambers Street. Indeed, research by the Alliance indicates that the average community elsewhere in the five boroughs (and north of 96th Street, in Manhattan) was sending more than 3,400 of its residents to jobs Downtown daily.
And these figures do not include the 56,000 public employees who also work for all levels of government, at more than 100 separate offices, in Lower Manhattan. Further, most of those government offices remain open (albeit, with a reduced complement of staff), because their work is deemed to be essential to public well-being. Also missing from this tally is the roster of 40,000-plus college and university students who were studying at classrooms in Lower Manhattan each day, until the semester was cancelled.
In short, almost 350,000 people who do not live Downtown (or slightly more than four percent of the City’s overall population) were coming here for work or school each day prior to the quarantine and social distancing measures that were implemented in March. Among the 64,000-plus cases of coronavirus that have now been confirmed throughout the five boroughs of New York, it is unknown how many of those patients passed through Lower Manhattan in the weeks before being diagnosed, or how many of them came into contact with somebody else who did. But is appears probable that at least some brought coronavirus here with them, while others likely came healthy and left infected, carrying the pathogen with them to other communities through the City.
Matthew Fenton
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PUBLIC NOTICE
The following virtual meetings will take place
today, Monday, April 6, 2020, beginning at 12:30 p.m.
Meeting of the Board’s Audit Committee (12:30 p.m.);
Meeting of the Directors of the Battery Park City Parks Conservancy (2:00 p.m.);
Meeting of the Members of the Authority (2:15 p.m.)
Video recordings will be made available for post-meeting access via
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Resilience, in the Original Sense of the Word
Facing Adversity, One Community Leader Tries to Lead By Example
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In the days following September 11, 2001, Bob Townley called the community together at the basketball court at the intersection of Canal Street and Avenue of the Americas.
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Bob Townley, the founder and executive director of Manhattan Youth, reflects, “I’ve been through this before — twice, actually.” He is referring to a pair of previous cataclysms that seemed to threaten the viability of the Lower Manhattan community he serves, as well as the organization he leads.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the inundation of Hurricane Sandy, 11 years later, both wrecked the neighborhood. And both raised questions about whether Manhattan Youth, which provides services to thousands of school children, families, and seniors, could remain viable. So the ongoing crisis related to the pandemic coronavirus is not without precedent for him.
“In the fall of 2001,” he recalls, “pieces of the World Trade Center were in a pool on Rector Place, where we had been giving toddlers swimming lessons a few days before. And when I finally got back into our Downtown Community Center in November, 2012, we had 20 feet of water in the basement. The entire bottom level, and a second story below the street, were both submerged.”
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Dear Friends
New Amsterdam Market returns in virtual format, as a service to the growing community of purveyors, distributors, producers and other small businesses who are creating regional, sustainable, regenerative, healthful, and equitable food systems.
This initial listing is focused primarily on New York City and is by no means comprehensive. We welcome all suggestions for expanding our Directory to include like-minded businesses in the Northeast States including New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware; Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.
Sincerely,
Robert LaValva, Founder
New Amsterdam Market
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A pair of peregrin falcons are back in Lower Manhattan, high above 55 Water Street. Click to watch a live camera as they care for their clutch of eggs that are expected to hatch in the coming weeks.
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Community Board Activity This Week
The Manhattan Community Board 1 office is closed until further notice.
Please use man01@cb.nyc.gov as the principal means of communication with Community Board 1 staff. TOMORROW APRIL 7
AGENDA FOR TOMORROW’S MEETING
Transportation & Street Activity Permits Committee – 6:00 PM
1) Congestion Pricing Working Group Report on Tolling – Charles Komanoff, Contributor to Regional Planning Association’s Congestion Pricing in NYC: Getting it Right Report
2) Request for City Benches at 140 Broadway
Presentation by Jackson Wandres, RLA, Director of Landscape Architecture, NV5
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NEWS FROM PREVIOUS EDITIONS
OF THE BROADSHEETDAILY
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Pandemic Statistics
City Releases Data about Local Rates of Infection
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Lower Manhattan’s eight zip codes are the site of 309 confirmed cases
of coronavirus.
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A total of 309 residents of Lower Manhattan (among 724 who have been tested) are confirmed to have been infected by the pandemic coronavirus, according to statistics released by the City’s Department of Health (DOH) on Wednesday.
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Virtual Events Available to All
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Developing Stories: Native Photographers in the Field
Photo essay
National Museum of the American Indian
Virgil and Isabel Trujillo in their family apple orchard.
Virgil Trujillo manages part of Abiquiú’s centuries-old acequias, or communal irrigation system. It combines Spanish and Indigenous practices to direct water into fields. “Our identity is tied to the land,” he says. “Ranching and farming are the source of our life and freedom. Everything is tied to the land; everything starts as a natural resource.”
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Developing Stories: Native Photographers in the Field
National Museum of the American Indian
Developing Stories: Native Photographers in the Field is a pair of sequential photo essays created by Native photojournalists Russel Albert Daniels and Tailyr Irvine in collaboration with the National Museum of the American Indian. The work of both photographers springs from the same desires—to break down stereotypes of Native peoples and to portray stories that show the diversity and complexity of their contemporary lives.
While the installation of the first photo essay by Daniels — The Genízaro People of Abiquiú — is postponed due to coronavirus, the photo essay is online.
Youth Art Contest
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Celebrate Endangered Species Day (May 15) and the 50th anniversary of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) by participating in the Greater Atlantic Region’s Marine Endangered Species Art Contest.
Endangered and threatened species need our help. Students’ artwork will showcase their knowledge and commitment to protecting these animals. Throughout 2020, NOAA is celebrating 50 years of science, service, and stewardship. NOAA is a world-class forecasting and resource management agency with a reach that goes from the surface of the sun to the depths of the ocean floor. In the next 50 years, NOAA will advance innovative research and technology, answer tough scientific questions, explored the unexplored, inspire new approaches to conservation, and power the U.S. economy. Through April 24
Today through April 30
Mission to Remember
9/11 Memorial and Museum
This documentary series explores the shared commitment to the mission behind the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. From showing how we create new traditions of tribute, to demonstrating our unique conservation techniques, the short films go beyond the surface to immerse viewers in untold stories of honor and remembrance. Click here to view the series.Today through April 30
The Stories They Tell
9/11 Memorial and Museum
Family members, survivors, first responders and recovery workers discuss the 9/11 history they are helping to preserve through the material they have shared with the 9/11 Memorial Museum. Click here.
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Today through April 30
Battery Dance TV
Battery Dance
Offerings include morning warmup/stretching/conditioning exercises, mid-day classes in contemporary dance with afro, ballet and jazz fusion elements, evening classes in varied ballroom styles, plus a daily short video at 4pm by dancers performing in their living rooms.
Today through April 30
Tourist in Your Own Town Videos
The New York Landmarks Conservancy
Now that most of us are staying home, you can take virtual tours of New York City.Visit Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, Alexander Hamilton’s home in Upper Manhattan, the Woolworth Building in Lower Manhattan, the site of the Battle of Brooklyn, the home of one of America’s first female photographers on Staten Island, and Louis Armstrong’s home in Queens. There are 61 sites in all. You’ll be amazed at the discoveries you will make.
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Role Reversal
Downtown Food Festival Supports Local Restaurants by Feeding Healthcare Workers
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The ever-popular Taste of Tribeca food festival has been cancelled for this year, but the organizers are rallying support to help the now-struggling restaurants that have contributed food for decades, by purchasing meals to donate to hospital workers.
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Starting today, up to 100 free meals will be arriving daily at local healthcare facilities, prepared by half a dozen Lower Manhattan restaurants, and paid for with contributions solicited by the Downtown parents who organize the Taste of Tribeca food festival.
For the past 25 years, that event has accepted food contributed by dozens of eateries, and sold these “tastes” at a street fair, to raise money for two beloved local public schools: P.S. 234 and P.S. 150. Earlier this month, however, mounting concerns about the pandemic coronavirus forced the first-ever cancellation of the event.
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Gimme Shelter
City Takes Over FiDi Hotel to House Homeless
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A guard posted to the lobby of the Radisson New York Wall Street Hotel demands that a reporter leave on Monday afternoon, after refusing to answer questions about homeless people being sheltered there.
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The administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio is housing several dozen homeless people in a luxury hotel in the Financial District. In a story first reported by the New York Post, the Radisson New York Wall Street Hotel (located at the corner of William and Pine Streets), which has been closed in the wake of the pandemic coronavirus, is being used (at least temporarily) as shelter for homeless adults.
The Broadsheet could not ascertain whether this is an interim measure, or if the City’s Department of Homeless Services (DHS) intends to house its clients at this site indefinitely. Also unclear is whether the hotel is being used as a quarantine facility, in the wake of reports that more than 100 residents in the City’s homeless shelter system have tested positive for the coronavirus, and two have died.
When a reporter approached the front door of the hotel on Monday afternoon to inquire, security guards in surgical masks and plastic ponchos refused to answer questions, demanded that he stop taking photographs, and ordered him to leave. The DHS did not return calls asking for comment.
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Biking through traffic seven years ago at lunch hour in downtown Manhattan compared to the dearth of people and traffic after the Corona virus epidemic is a huge contrast. Footage is sped up, so although it may look a but scary, the ride was totally safe!
Thanks and be well! -Esther R.
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Bravo to the Frontline Workers!
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Scanning Rector Place from his window the other night, Lower Manhattan resident Marcello de Peralta captured heartfelt community appreciation for workers at the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic.
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Seaport Dog Walkers Maintain Social Distancing; Their Dogs, Well, That’s Another Matter
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FiDi resident Mike Devereaux sent photos of Pier 16 morning dog walks
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Grim Harbingers
Local Luminaries Claimed by Pandemic, with Tally of Losses Poised to Grow
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A truck parked on Spruce Street, outside of New York-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital, that appears to be intended for use as a temporary morgue.
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Hospitals around New York, already coping with a tsunami of patients made critically ill by the pandemic coronavirus, have begun to prepare for a second onslaught: a wave of deceased victims.
Like healthcare facilities throughout the five boroughs, New York-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital now has an unmarked, refrigerated truck parked outside. On Spruce Street, surrounded by traffic barricades and caution tape, the trailer’s back end is discretely cloaked by a white tent, connecting it to a nearby exit from the building. This will allow movement between the doors and the truck, concealed from public view. As is the case at more than a dozen other hospitals around Manhattan, this truck appears to be earmarked for use as a temporary morgue.
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Eyes to the Sky
March 30 – April 12, 2020
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“Stars of the Forest: Elegy for 9/11”
by Naoto Nakagawa
Collection of National September 11 Memorial & Museum
Published with permission of the artist.
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Field guide to nightly entertainment
Are you missing the buzz at gatherings in theaters and movie houses? While we continue to learn how to dodge threats of the pandemic to our physical health, spring is arriving with opportunities to nurture mind and body in the safety of the outdoors. When I challenge my eyes to find planet Venus high in the west shortly after sunset, it could be that I am giving a boost to my immune system. Besides, it is a delightful pursuit for people of all ages every clear evening. Venus appears high in the west as a point of white light, the Evening Star, in blue sky about half an hour after sunset. Sunset is shortly after 7:15pm this week. The goddess planet increases in brilliance and decreases in altitude as the sky darkens: look for Venus all night until she sets in the west-northwest at about 11:30pm.
The early bird show continues to the left of Venus, in the south to southwest, where Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens, appears as the sky darkens. Then, find a lookout to the northeast horizon about 90 minutes after sunset to receive the golden light of the second brightest star in our sky, Arcturus.
In dark sky locations, at nightfall, from east to west, find Leo the Lion, The Big Dog, the triangular head of Taurus the Bull and Orion the Hunter. They are visible until about midnight. For a lifetime field guide to the stars through the year, consider purchasing a star wheel aka planisphere.
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A note about artist Naoto Nakagawa’s painting, “Stars of the Forest.” It began as a reflection on “a glorious moment in nature’s drama.” Its beauty, like a stroll in a natural landscape and stargazing, is especially heartening as we suffer the COVID19 pandemic. Naoto Nakagawa started the painting a week before 9/11. He states, “At the time, I was unaware that it would be an elegy for that disaster. … after working on it for three months, I came to realize what is was about. The inner light that permeates the entire surface represents the victims of 9/11, expressed as shining stars.The image holds both the tragedy now being experienced around the world and the infinite beauty of nature and the human spirit.”
Resources
Judy Isacoff
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Where to Get Care
Lower Manhattan Health Resources for Residents with Concerns
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Government officials are asking that people with non-urgent health problems avoid showing up at hospital emergency rooms, which are already overburdened.
Instead, they ask that patients who have concerns consult with their personal physicians. Those in need of non-emergency medical help can also call (or walk into) one of the five Lower Manhattan urgent care clinics that remain open. As of Thursday afternoon, these are:
• CityMD Financial District (24 Broad Street). No appointment necessary. 646-647-1259.
• CityMD Fulton (138 Fulton Street). No appointment necessary. 212-271-4896.
• CityMD Tribeca (87 Chambers Street). No appointment necessary. 347-745-8321.
• NYU Langone at Trinity (111 Broadway). Appointment required. 212-263-9700.
• Mount Sinai Doctors (225 Greenwich Street, fifth floor). No appointment necessary. 212-298-2720.
That noted, anyone experiencing dangerous symptoms (such as trouble breathing or dangerous spikes in body temperature) is encouraged to go to a hospital emergency room.
Two Lower Manhattan healthcare providers are also offering Virtual Visits, in which patients can consult over the phone or video link with a physician or nurse practitioner.
To schedule such a session with NYU Langone, please browse: NYULangone.org, and click on Virtual Urgent Care. To make an appointment with New York-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital, please browse NYP.org, and click on Virtual Urgent Care. Patients enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program are advised not to cancel or reschedule existing appointments. Clinic staff will be contacting you to make arrangements to convert these sessions into a tele-visits.
All program participants with prescriptions for their certified WTC-related conditions are strongly encouraged to sign up for Optum Home Delivery which allows for 90-day prescription fills and delivers directly to members by mail.
For more information, please call Optum at 855-640–0005, Option 2. For members who prefer to pick up prescriptions at retail pharmacies, the program is waiving early medication refill limits on 30-day prescription maintenance medications. Please call Optum at 855-640–0005, Option 3 for more information.
The World Trade Center Health Program is also covering limited COVID-19 testing for members with certain certified World Trade Center-related conditions that may put them at higher risk of illness from COVID-19. In addition to testing, treatment for COVID-19 is also covered, contingent on certain criteria being met, including that the member was eligible for COVID-19 testing, the treatment is authorized by the program, and the treatment is not experimental. Coverage of COVID-19 treatment costs requires approval by the program’s administrator, on a case-by-case basis.
Matthew Fenton
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Desperate Times for Street Food Vendors
Council Member and Advocacy Group Petition for Funds and to Suspend Most Enforcement Actions Toward Food Carts
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Street vendors, who are mostly ineligible for benefits like unemployment or health insurance, have recently suffered losses of more than 80 percent of their usual revenue.
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As the pandemic coronavirus continues to grip New York, one cohort of the Downtown community is experiencing a heightened level of distress, according to City Council member Margaret Chin and a non-profit advocacy group based in Lower Manhattan. To read more…
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The Niou Deal
Assembly Member Proposes Finance Reform as Funding Mechanism for Affordable Housing
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State Assembly member Yuh-Line Niou: “When you go shopping in New York City, how much extra do you pay for sales tax? This transfer tax of one-half of one percent is less than one-sixteenth of what you pay. But it would raise billions for public housing.”
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Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Monday that planning must begin immediately for how to rebuild the wreckage of the economy, once the health crisis brought on by the pandemic cononavirus has abated.
“We have to start to plan the pivot back to economic functionality,” he said during a press conference at the Jacob Javits Convention Center on Manhattan’s west side, where he announced the start of construction on a temporary hospital. “You can’t stop the economy forever.” To read more…Matthew Fenton
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Going to the Mattresses
Lower Manhattan Hunkers Down, as Coronavirus Crisis Grinds On
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Multiple residents of Lower Manhattan have now tested positive for the pandemic coronavirus, including one tenant at Gateway Plaza in Battery Park City, who has been hospitalized and is breathing with the assistance of a mechanical ventilator, according to a range of sources with direct knowledge of the circumstances.
In a separate development, a resident of Battery Park City died on Saturday after plunging from the 16th floor of his building at 400 Chambers Street, in an apparent suicide.
On a more encouraging note, a teacher at P.S./I.S. 276 (also located in Battery Park City), who exhibited symptoms that warranted a test for coronavirus, has been confirmed to be free of the disease.
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WANTED:
Your Coronavirus story in one hundred words.
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coveni
covidi
covici
Maryna Lansky
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Necessity Is the Mother of Intervention
Repurposing of Rivington House Might Help Meet Need for Clinical Capacity Arising from Pandemic
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Rivington House on the Lower East Side
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A Lower Manhattan building steeped in controversy may become a lifeline for people infected by the pandemic COVID-19 virus. In a story first reported by Crain’s New York, Rivington House is being considered as a possible treatment site.
The Lower East Side building served for decades as an HIV/AIDS care facility. But in 2014, the structure was acquired by real estate speculators, who paid a fraction of its market value, because a deed restriction that committed the building to use as a clinic. To read more…
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Meditations in an Emergency
Our Hometown and the Myth of Eternal Return
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You tell yourself that you’ve seen this story before, and more than once: edifices falling; waters rising. And you reflect that the worst situations are not those that can’t get any worse. The worst situations are the ones that are going to get worse before they get better. So you hunker down.
You recall the Old Man deciding, a lifetime ago, that since you were too old for fairy tales, you were perhaps old enough for true confessions. To read more…
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A Lifeline for Mom-and-Pop Shops
Amid Coron-Apocalypse, City Offers Loans and Grants for Struggling Small Businesses
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The administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio has inaugurated a program to aid small businesses that have experienced financial hardship because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Firms with fewer than 100 employees, which have undergone sales decreases of 25 percent or more will be eligible for zero interest loans of up to $75,000 to help mitigate losses in profit. The City’s Department of Small Business Services is also offering small businesses with fewer than five employees a grant to cover 40 percent of payroll costs for two months, to help retain employees.
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The Order of Aviz existed from 1385 to 1580.
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85 – John, Master of the Order of Aviz, is made King of Portugal.
The Order of Aviz, a monastic military order was inspired by the Knights Templar, had a presence in Portugal from 1128 when they received a grant from Theresa, Countess of Portugal. The Order of Aziz was originally called “Knights of St. Benedict of Aziz”, which in turn came from their conquest of the Aviz province.
1712 – The New York Slave Revolt of 1712 begins near Broadway.
1793 – During the French Revolution, the Committee of Public Safety established itself as the primary executive body for the newfound republic.
1896 – In Athens, the kickoff of the first modern Olympic Games is celebrated. Fourteen nations and 241 (all male) participants were present in the games, which lasted from April 6 to 15.
1917 – World War I: Woodrow Wilson declares war against Germany
1947 – The first Tony Awards are presented for the performing arts and theatrical achievements.
1965 – The launch of Early Bird, the first commercial communications satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit.
2008 – The Egyptian general strike started led by the working class later to be adopted by Egyptian activists and the April 6 Youth Movement, a human rights solidarity movement that communicated mostly through social media.
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Births
1671 – Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, French poet and playwright (d. 1741
1904 – Kurt Georg Kiesenger, German lawyer, politician, and Chancellor of Germany (d. 1988)
1928 – James Watson, American biologist, geneticist and zoologist, Nobel Prize Laureate. Watson, among other achievements, co-wrote the paper proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule that is commonly known today.
Deaths
1520 – Raphael, Italian painter and architect (b. 1483)
1676 – John Winthrop the Younger, English politician, 1st Governor of Connecticut who is known for uniting several communities in the Connecticut River Valley. (b.1606)
1944 – Rosie O’Neil, American cartoonist, illustrator, artist and writer. (b. 1874)
2000 – Habib Bourgiuba, Tunisian politician, First President of Tunisia (b. 1903)
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395 South End Avenue,
New York, NY 10280
212-912-1106
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No part of this document may be reproduced without the written permission of the publisher © 2020
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