Lower Manhattan’s Local News
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Governor Cuomo has issued an executive order requiring all people in New York to wear masks or face coverings in public, including when taking public or private transportation or riding in for-hire vehicles.
More information: coronavirus.health.ny.gov/home or call 1-888-364-3065.All non-essential workers must continue to work from home and schools and everyone is required to maintain a 6-foot distance from others in public
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Quittance for Those Who Never Quit
Gateway Tenants Say Thanks for Being There During the Tough Times
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Plinio Perez, (front and center), with his staff at Gateway Plaza
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Tenants at Gateway Plaza, Battery Park City’s largest residential complex, have partnered with their landlord to raise tens of thousands of dollars to thank staff members for keeping the facility running during the pandemic coronavirus.
The project began in April, when a group of residents came together and launched a GoFundMe page, asking neighbors to contribute to a fund that would be distributed among Gateway employees. Within two weeks, the GoFundMe page had accumulated more than $25,000.
This prompted Gateway’s management to commit to matching whatever the neighbors contributed. Gregory Tumminia, Gateway’s general manger, says, “the LeFrak, Fisher and Olnick families — who make up the ownership of Gateway — have been working tirelessly since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to provide a safe and supportive environment for their residents and employees. We believe it is important to recognize the hard work and professionalism of our staff teams who support Gateway every day. When we learned that our residents acknowledged the efforts Gateway and its employees were undertaking to maintain its high level of operations during this very challenging time, we were deeply moved and wanted to echo the residents’ gratitude which is why we decided to match what the residents raised through their Go Fund Me campaign.”
As a result of the matching commitment from Gateway’s management, the fund will now distribute more than $50,000 to the several dozen employees who maintain the complex.
One of the leaders of the group of tenants who began raising money several weeks ago (who has asked that her name be withheld) says, “this was an absolutely incredible community-based effort to raise money for our beloved staff! It has been such a pleasure and delight to see the outpouring of generosity from our amazing Gateway residents and we are honored to live in such a special community.”
She adds, “this is a ‘thank you’ across all staff for keeping Gateway running during these challenging times. This is an act of appreciation for how awesome the staff always is.”
Matthew Fenton
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A Call to Alms
Community Leaders Partner with Food Charity to Feed Downtown Residents in Need
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A Rethink food distribution table on East Broadway, in Chinatown.
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In the best of times, some 1.4 million New York City residents chronically suffer from what is called “food insecurity.” But these are not the best of times. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has shuttered stores, isolated the elderly and handicapped in their homes, and posed multiple other challenges for those whose grip on daily sustenance was already tenuous before the onset of the crisis.
In response, a broad array of non-profit and public service organizations are stepping up, creating new distribution networks and recruiting cadres of volunteers, to bring food to the doorsteps of people who might otherwise go hungry.
One of these is Rethink Food NYC, a non-profit organization that works to recover nutritious excess food (sourced from restaurants, grocery stores and corporate kitchens) and use it to provide low or no-cost meals to New York City families in need. To read more
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‘The Doctor Told Me My Chances Were 50-50’
A Widely Admired Community Leader Recalls Her Life-and-Death Battle with COVID-19
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Daisy Paez, a District Leader, makes a point
at a late-February meeting of the New Downtown Democrats.
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Daisy Paez, a Lower East side activist who has served for years as a local District Leader, is a universally revered matriarch among Downtown’s political and community family. She recently returned from more than a month of hospitalization, during which she nearly died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the pandemic coronavirus.
“It felt like somebody just snatched me from my life and threw me into this horrifying ordeal,” she recalls. “In the beginning, I remember hearing how people would get really ill, and that if you had a cough or a high fever, you needed to see a doctor. But I was fine. Then, in the last week of March, I started feeling sick. I went to the CityMD urgent care facility on Delancey Street, and they gave me a flu test, which came back negative. They also gave me a test for COVID-19, and told me the results would be available in about five days.”
Later that week, she says, “it really hit me. I had a low-grade fever, but it wouldn’t go away. And I started feeling so weak and tired that I had trouble walking. Then, on April 1, I couldn’t stand up. And I had this violent, dry cough. It was hard to breathe.”
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Letters
Esplanade Traffic
To the editor:
I am finding it impossible to walk on the esplanade with all the speeding bicyclists and runners (most not wearing face masks).
After the bike path was built on West Street, I believe biking on the esplanade where elderly and children walk is far too dangerous – even pre-pandemic.
Maria K.
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NEWS FROM PREVIOUS EDITIONS
OF THE BROADSHEETDAILY
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What Comes Next?
Assembly Member Proposes Post-Pandemic New Deal
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State Assembly member Yuh-Line Niou: “We must take this moment to fundamentally rethink government, and establish policies that prioritize the struggling many, not the wealthy few — while ensuring that the wealthy pay their fair share, so we have the resources to make this happen.”
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Yuh-Line Niou, who represents Lower Manhattan in the New York State Assembly, is pushing for a comprehensive package of legislation to address a broad range of needs that are expected to follow the ongoing crisis sparked by the pandemic coronavirus.
The 25 bills she is sponsoring include measures to help with joblessness, housing affordability, healthcare, childcare, and rising poverty rates, as well as tax reform that seeks to relieve the burden on low-income individuals and small businesses, while raising revenue from people and firms with the resources to pay more.
“In this moment, many are now realizing the critical role that government can and should play when faced with a crisis of this magnitude,” Ms. Niou says. “It must also be noted that many of these problems exist only because we have for too long followed a demonstrably flawed economic policy that sacrifices strong public institutions in exchange for endless tax breaks for the wealthiest among us.”
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Community Board 1
In case you missed the April 2020 board meeting,
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A Bump in the Curve, But Trend Remains Favorable
Rate of Confirmed Infections Among Lower Manhattan Residents Rises Slightly
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A total of 660 residents of Lower Manhattan have tested positive for the pandemic coronavirus, which translates into 75 new local cases, or a jump of approximately 12.8 percent, in the last seven days.
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A total of 660 residents of Lower Manhattan (among 1,946 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). These numbers are current as of Thursday afternoon (April 30). Given the current City-wide mortality rate for COVID-19 (the disease caused by coronavirus) of approximately 7.7 percent, roughly 45 of these patients appear likely to die.
This updated tally for confirmed cases of coronavirus indicates that the total number of local residents known to be infected has jumped by 75 new cases, or approximately 12.8 percent, since April 24 (the date of the Broadsheet’s previous update of these statistics), when the total number of Lower Manhattan cases was 585 patients. This does not necessarily mean that the local rate of infection is growing at 12.8 percent per week, but may be a reflection more patients being tested.
But it does offer a glimpse of somewhat reassuring news: In the interval between two the Broadsheet’s earlier updates (on April 9 and April 17), the rate of increase in confirmed cases among Lower Manhattan residents had been 31 percent.
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Merchant Munificence
Alliance Throws a Lifeline to Lower Manhattan Small Businesses
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Jessica Lappin, Downtown Alliance president: “There is not one storefront business in New York City that has been spared by COVID-19. Every one of them is struggling. We are stepping up to do what we can to help stores keep their lights on.”
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The Downtown Alliance is launching a new program to help storefront businesses in Lower Manhattan, via which it plans to give away $800,000 in grants.
The Small Business Rental Assistance Grant program aims to offer immediate help to shops currently providing vital services to residents and essential workers in Lower Manhattan during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and is funded with contributions from Brookfield Properties, Silverstein Properties and the Howard Hughes Corporation, as well as $250,000 from the Alliance itself.
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Exhibition: National Museum of the American Indian
“Developing Stories: Native Photographers in the Field”
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Procession for the Feast Day of Santo Tomas. Abiquiú, New Mexico, 2019.
© 2020 Russel Albert Daniels
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Russel Albert Daniels was born in Salt Lake City, Utah and specialized in photography at the University of Montana School of Journalism. After a brief stint with the Associated Press, Daniels focused on documentary work relating to Native American identity and resilience, including projects on missing and murdered indigenous women as well as the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in coordination with the nearby Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota.
Daniels’ essay, The Genízaro Pueblo of Abiquiú, delves into the history and development of the Genízaro people. Starting in the mid 17th century, Spanish conquistadors attempted to “detribalize” various native communities through violence, abduction and forced assimilation into European communities. The Spanish went as far as renaming the captured indigenous individuals as Genízaro, which is Turkish for “slaves trained as soldiers”. The history of their plight and persecution is forever encapsulated in their built and natural environment, be it crumbling, such as 18th-century church structures like the Santa Rosa de Lima Church.
Taiylr Irvine was born in the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana. She has worked on assignments for a variety of news organizations such as the New York Times, CNN and Washington Post. Being from Salish and Kootenai descent, Irvine focuses her independent journalism on matters such as in-depth exposes and research on the diverse Native American communities in contemporary America.
In Irvine’s Reservation Mathematics:Navigating Love in Native America, she stresses the interconnectedness of government regulations and dating life for indigenous communities that seek to maintain their sense of identity. The 1934 Indian Reorganization Act establishes certain criteria for who can apply to settle on particular reservations; consequently, if you have lineage from multiple tribes then it can limit your chance at eligibility for a reservation. This photo-essay–which highlights inidigenous couples and individuals from the LGBTQ community, high schoolers, a council member, among others– demonstrates the impact that arbitrary “eligibility” standards have on one’s sense of identity and worth, as being a member of a tribe comes with a sense of honor.
The exhibition “Developing Stories: Native Photographers in the Field” is a series of photographs and essays by indigenous photojournalists Russel Albert Daniels and Taiylr Irvine.
Max Sano
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Free Lunch, and Much More
The City is providing free “Grab and Go” meals for anybody (not just students) who needs or wants them, at 435 public schools throughout the five boroughs.
Two facilities in Battery Park City—Stuyvesant High School (345 Chambers Street, near North End Avenue, and P.S./I.S. 276 (55 Battery Place, near First Place)—have been designated to serve Lower Manhattan as “Meal Hubs, each weekday, from 7:30 am to 1:30 pm.
Children and families are welcome from 7:30 to 11:30 am, and adults will be given food from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm. All adults and children can pick up multiple meals at once. Parents and guardians may pick up meals for their children.
No registration, identification, or documentation is required. Vegetarian and halal are available at all locations. No one will be turned away at any time, but no dining space is available at these facilities, so meals must be eaten off premises.
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3/4 BD + 2 FULL BATH Colonial on .23 acres (50×202) in desirable Livingston NJ. Quiet street close to NYC bus stop, shopping and restaurants. CHARMING OPEN flow from Kitchen to Dining to Living Room. Main Level Bedroom #4 (can also be used as a den) has an EN-SUITE perfect for guests. DEEP Level backyard, 2 CAR Garage, Finished Basement. Excellent school system
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The Food Chain
More than 30 Lower Manhattan restaurants and bars have set up GoFundMe pages to raise money that will help them pay employees and otherwise remain viable during the economic downturn induced by the pandemic coronavirus.
Each of these campaigns is an opportunity not only to help your favorite eatery, but also to make less likely the very real prospect that—come the next recovery—our streetscape will be populated entirely by corporate chains and denuded of locally owned small businesses.
The Downtown Alliance has set up a page with links to each, click here.
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Remembering a Fallen Healer
A Local Leader Recalls Tribeca’s Nisar Quraishi
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Nisar A. Quraishi, MD (1947 – 2020)
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Russ Schulman, a longtime resident of Tribeca and the associate executive director at Manhattan Youth, says of Dr. Nisar A. Quraishi, “he was my primary care physician for decades, and a trusted friend.”
Dr. Quraishi, who died from COVID-19 (the disease caused by the pandemic coronavirus) in April, at age 73, was a Tribeca pioneer, hanging out a shingle in 1976 at the then-new Independence Plaza, just a few years after earning a degree in medicine in his native Pakistan.
“I loved him from the first moment,” Mr. Schulman recalls. “He was always very thoughtful, very kind and reassuring. A great doctor, in every sense.”
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Where the Sidewalk Forfends
Data Scientist Finds That Downtown Footpaths Impede Social Distancing
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This online data visualization map shows the prevalence of streets in Lower Manhattan deemed too narrow for effective distancing from passersby.
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Although Lower Manhattan is among the communities least affected by the pandemic coronavirus anywhere in the five boroughs, it faces one increased risk that most other neighborhoods do not. A new analysis shows that narrow sidewalk widths in the square mile below Chambers Street make it especially difficult to practice social distancing here.
Meli Harvey, a senior computational designer at Sidewalk Labs — an urban innovation organization owned by Google, which aims to improve civic infrastructure through technological solutions — has completed an inventory of sidewalk widths throughout the five boroughs.
“It started a few weeks ago, when I was walking around Boreum Hill, where I live,” Ms. Harvey recalls, “and noticed that it was tough to walk while avoiding people. The width of the sidewalks make it necessary to move into the street. And suddenly, I made the connection between sidewalk widths and social distancing. I have also worked in the Financial District, so I immediately thought of that area and its narrow sidewalks, too.” To read more…
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An April Intervention
The Hunter and the Hunted, Along with a Haunted Onlooker
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Isaiah Berlin famously observed that, “the fox knows many little things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” A Lower Manhattan resident thought of this on a Saturday afternoon in mid-April, when Downtown was locked down, but he ventured outside — desperate for fresh air, seeking signs of life — and was confronted by this tableaux in the Battery. The raptor perched on the park bench knew one big thing: that he was too large to get beneath the seat, where his lunch awaited. And the squirrel below knew one little thing: that he was safe as long as he stayed where he was.
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CLASSIFIEDS &PERSONALS
Swaps & Trades
Respectable Employment
Lost and Found
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SHSAT TUTORING
Stuyvesant HS graduate
available for SHSAT tutoring. $40/hr. Zoom or in-person
Nurse’s Aide
Caring, experienced Nurse’s Aide seeks PT/FT position.
Excellent references
ELDERCARE:
Available for PT/FT Exp’d. Refs
Experienced Elder Care
Able to prepare nutritious meals and light housekeeping.
Excellent references
HOUSEKEEPING/ NANNY/ BABYSITTER
Available for PT/FT . Wonderful person, who is a great worker. Refs avail
Worked in BPC. Call Tenzin
347-803-9523
Seeking Full-Time Live-In Elder Care
12 years experience, refs avail
I am a loving caring hardworking certified home health aide
Marcia 347 737 5037
IT AND SECURITY SUPPORT
Expertise in 1-on-1 tutoring for all ages.Computer upgrading & troubleshooting. Knowledgeable in all software programs.
347-933-1362. Refs available
If you would like to place a listing, please contact
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The RMS Lusitania was launched by Cunard in 1907 to compete with the German and Dutch transatlantic passage business to the New World. For a short time she was the world’s largest ship and holder of the Blue Riband as she had revolutionary turbine engines that allowed a cruising speed of 25 knots. She was also the first vessel to have quad screws.
During her eight-year service, she made a total of 202 crossings on the Cunard Line’s Liverpool-New York Route. She departed New York on May 1, 1915, after the German Embassy ran newspaper ads advising people not to sail on the Lusitania as Germany considered the waters around Great Britain in the war zone. It was in the afternoon of May 7th that German UBoat U20 torpedoed her and Lusitania sank in 300 feet of water in about 18 minutes. 1198 people perished 761 survived.
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558 – In Constantinople, the dome of the Hagia Sophia collapses. Justinian I immediately orders the dome rebuilt.
1664 – Louis XIV of France inaugurates The Palace of Versailles.
1697 – Stockholm’s royal castle (dating back to medieval times) is destroyed by fire (in the 18th century, it is replaced by the current Royal Palace).
1789 – First inaugural ball for George Washington in NYC
1824 – l (Chorale) Symphony, premieres in Vienna
1888 – George Eastman patents “Kodak box camera”
1912 – Columbia University approves plans for awarding the Pulitzer Prize in several categories The award is established by Joseph Pulitzer
1915 – Lusitania sunk by German submarine; 1198 lives lost
1952 – The concept of the integrated circuit, the basis for all modern computers, is first published by Geoffrey W.A. Dummer.
1960 – USSR announces Francis Gary Powers confessed to being a CIA spy
1982 – IBM releases PC-DOS version 1.1
1998 – Mercedes-Benz buys Chrysler for $40 billion USD and forms DaimlerChrysler in the largest industrial merger in history.
2012 – Vladimir Putin sworn in for third six year term as President of Russia
2013 – 55 people are killed by a Boko Haram attack in Nigeria
Birthdays
1826 – Varina Howell Davis, first lady of the Confederacy, died in 1905
1840 – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Votkinsk, Russia, composer (1812 Overture, Swan Lake), (d. 1893) [NS]
1909 – Edwin Land, inventor of instant photography with his company Polaroid
Deaths
973 – Otto I the Great, Holy Roman Emperor (962-973), dies at 60
1166 – Willem I, the Bad, king of Sicily (1154-66)
1825 – Antonio Salieri, Italian composer, dies in Vienna at 74
1915 – Alfred G Vanderbilt, US millionaire, dies aboard Lusitania
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Hostel Intentions
Downtown Hotel Business May Be an Enduring Casualty of Pandemic
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The Conrad Hotel is being used to house healthcare workers battling the pandemic coronavirus.
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As local travel and tourism have ground to a halt in the wake of the pandemic coronavirus, one Downtown business sector is undergoing what may be a permanent transformation. By any reasonable yardstick, the hotel business in Lower Manhattan has been drastically overbuilt — the result of nearly two decades of giddy speculation, by developers.
Today, there are 37 hotels operating in the square mile below Chambers Street, offering more than 7,900 rooms, according to the 2019 Lower Manhattan Real Estate Year in Review, a report from the Downtown Alliance.
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COVID-19 and your pets.
A Guide from the Mayor’s Office of Animal Welfare
how to care for your pet during the COVID-19 Pandemic
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Taste of Tribeca Community Fund
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To the community,
Three weeks ago, we launched the Taste of Tribeca Community Fund.
Since then you have given us over $60,000 and with this we have purchased over 4,800 meals from 10 Taste of Tribeca restaurants for delivery to 11 New York City hospitals, plus FDNY Ladder 8, FDNY Engine 7, the NYPD 1st Precinct, and NYC Department of Sanitation Manhattan District 1.
You have helped to keep these restaurants in business, and in turn the restaurant teams have been doing some of the most important cooking and meal service of their careers, for the healthcare workers on the front lines against Covid-19.
The importance of your contribution cannot be emphasized enough. As another organization doing similar work has put it, we are not merely sending care packages as a thank you to the healthcare workers. We are providing them with basic nourishment, which they have no time to buy on their own, and in some areas no one even from whom to buy them.
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And in our little corner of the city, we have restaurants willing and able to serve and for whom our large orders are essential to the continued operation of their business.
We are now down to our last few thousand dollars, which, at our current pace, will last us another few days to a week. We would love to keep going until at least May 15, so please consider donating again if you can, and share our mission with your families, friends and colleagues. Your continued generosity and support will directly benefit our restaurants, our neighborhood, and the healthcare heroes in our great city.
Thank you from all of us at Taste of Tribeca!
If you can help us, we would appreciate it.
Here is our most recent campaign update sent to donors, plus our GoFundMe and Instagram feed. Our current meal count is over 5,000. Thank you,
Bettina Teodoro
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‘As Sick as I’ve Ever Been in My Life’
One Survivor’s First-Person Account of Grappling with the Coronavirus
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(Editor’s Note: This narrative was supplied to the Broadsheet by a Battery Park City resident who has asked to remain anonymous.)
When I first heard about this, back in late January or early February, I wasn’t sure how it was different from a more serious version of seasonal flu, because the narrative was familiar — starting in Asia, and coming from some kind of animal population. The one difference I remember noting was that this sounded much more contagious.
After that, I didn’t think much more about it for several weeks, other than to frame it as a kind of “second” flu season. But near the end of February, the beginning of March, my perception changed, along with everybody else’s. This was clearly different, because of how it had jumped to humans, and how aggressively it was spreading.
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A Bear Market for Apartments
Downtown Residential Real Estate on Life Support
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As business activity ground to a halt in March due to the pandemic coronavirus, the market for apartments in Lower Manhattan experienced something akin to a heart attack during the first quarter on this year, according to analyses from two real estate data firms.
A pair of reports from Platinum Properties, a brokerage firm headquartered in the Financial District, documents the carnage in Battery Park City and the Financial District. The first notes that the median price for condominiums sold in Battery Park City dropped from $1.515 million in the first quarter of 2019 to $1.005 million in the same period this year. That represents a 33.7 percent decline in 12 months, and a 14 percent decline just since the last quarter of 2019, when the median price was $1.168 million. To read more…
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WANTED:
Your Coronavirus story in one hundred words.
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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.
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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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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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