The BroadsheetDAILY – 3/25/22 – Local Legacies Lionized – Three Downtown Preservation Projects Cited as Exemplars of Landmark Protection

The Broadsheet – Lower Manhattan’s Local Newspaper

Local Legacies Lionized

Three Downtown Preservation Projects Cited as Exemplars of Landmark Protection

The current Trinity Church, the third to stand at the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway, dates from 1846 and recently underwent a $112-million renovation. Below: The rejuvenation of Trinity Church included the installation of three new organs, with 7,000 pipes, as well as a painstaking renovation of the building’s stained-glass windows.

Three of Lower Manhattan’s architectural masterpieces have been singled out for the prestigious Lucy G. Moses Preservation Award, conferred each year by the New York Landmarks Conservancy, a highly regarded non-profit organization (itself based in Lower Manhattan, on Whitehall Street) that seeks to protect New York’s architecturally significant buildings.

Trinity Church, Richard Upjohn’s 1846 neo-Gothic opus, has been cited for its multi-year, $112-million preservation and renovation program, which has included upgrades to handicapped accessibility and resiliency to climate change, as well as the installation of three new organs (with 7,000 pipes), and the restoration of the Church’s historic stained-glass windows.

Above: A highlight of the preservation work at One Wall was the restoration of its historic Red Room lobby. Below: One Wall Street, which stands directly across Broadway from Trinity Church, was recently converted from office space into a residential tower.

Across Broadway from Trinity Church, One Wall Street is being recognized for the sensitivity and restraint with which architect Ralph Thomas Walker’s 1931 Art Deco masterwork—originally known as the Irving Trust Building—was converted into a residential tower. In particular, acclaimed muralist Hildreth Meière’s mosaic Red Room lobby has been repaired, cleaned, and restored it to its original magnificence.

The cast-iron building at 55 Reade Street was imperiled by excavation for the skyscraper that now surrounds it (which caused the structure to tilt by eight inches), but ultimately rescued and restored.

But the most dramatic of the citations for this year’s Moses Award focuses on the rescue of Tribeca’s “leaning landmark,” located at 55 Reade Street (and also known as 287 Broadway). This 1872 cast-iron amalgam of Italianate and French Second Empire styles, designed by architect John Snook, was designated a legally protected landmark in 1989, but was nonetheless endangered in 2007 when excavation for a skyscraper next door undermined the older structure’s foundation, causing it to tilt by as much as eight inches. A decade of forensic engineering and precisely calibrated buttressing (during which the building was supported by an erector set of external steel beams, hurriedly installed as an emergency measure) brought the structure back into vertical alignment, saving it from having to be condemned and demolished as a safety precaution.

Matthew Fenton

Harmonic Convergence

New Production of Museum of Jewish Heritage Recalls 1930s Saga That Resonates Today

Previews have begun for the seven-week run of Harmony, a musical by Barry Manilow and his longtime collaborator Bruce Sussman at the Museum of Jewish Heritage (36 Battery Place, near First Place).

The production recalls the story of the Comedian Harmonists, “a singing group that was hugely popular in the 1920s and 30s,” Mr. Manilow recalls. “They were very inventive—a combination of the Manhattan Transfer and the Marx Brothers. They made 13 movies, along with dozens and dozens of records. But nobody remembers them today.”

Mr. Sussman reflects that, “when Barry and I write a big project, I need to be able to know what the spine sentence is—the guiding sentence for what this piece is about. I knew immediately this was about the quest for harmony in the broadest sense of the word, during what turned out to be the most discordant period of human history.” To read more…

Not a Penny for Tribute?

Community-Focused Cultural Center Faces Possible Closure

The 9/11 Tribute Museum, a highly regarded local cultural institution, is grappling with the prospect of imminent closure, according to chief executive officer and co-founder, Jennifer Adams-Webb, who told the Broadsheet, “without a donor or partner stepping forward, we are unable to sustain the 9/11 Tribute Museum with current visitation. The 9/11 Tribute Museum has served as a support for thousands of survivors, first responders, families and residents who were all directly affected by September 11. It will be a substantial loss to New York City and the community of support.” To read more…

Banks Heist

Lower Manhattan Students Mobilize to Demand Return of Park Space Beneath Brooklyn Bridge

On March 15, a team of student leaders from the Urban Assembly Maker Academy, a charter school located in Lower Manhattan, presented to the Waterfront, Parks, and Cultural Committee of Community Board 1 (CB1) a plan for reopening the Brooklyn Bridge Banks Park, located in the shadow of the iconic span that stretches across the East River from City Hall.

Amy Piller, the principal of the Urban Assembly Maker Academy (headquartered alongside the Brooklyn Bridge, within the Murry Bergtraum Campus, on Pearl Street) began by noting, “most of our students go out to eat at lunchtime. Particularly now, in light of the pandemic, there are really limited places where they can go.” To read more…

Eyes to the Sky

March 21 – April 3, 2022

Equinox Sun, Spring Star Arcturus rising, Solar Orbiter’s closest approach

We are two days past the Vernal Equinox (aequus = equal and nox = night), the astronomical first day of spring in the northern hemisphere when the rising Sun (due east on the horizon) and the setting Sun (due west) trace an arc in the sky that brings about equal day and night. Our star’s equinox trajectory is halfway between the winter and summer solstices, the shortest and longest days of the year, respectively.

Preservation as Privatization

Historic, Publicly Owned Battery Maritime Building Has Reopened, But Only for Paying Customers

Community Board 1 (CB1) is raising questions about the use of what was supposed to be public space at the Battery Maritime Building, located at Ten South Street.

The publicly owned structure, located next to the Staten Island Ferry, is a landmarked Beaux Art ferry terminal built in 1909. It served for three decades as the gateway for boats taking passengers across the East River, but after commuters and vehicles gained direct access to Manhattan with the advent of bridges, tunnels, and subways, ferry usage declined and the building fell into disrepair.

CLASSIFIEDS & PERSONALS

Swaps & Trades, Respectable Employment, Lost and Found

To place a listing, contact editor@ebroadsheet.com

Esplanade or Espla-Nada?

City Says Planned Improvements to East River Waterfront Are On Hold

The February 22 meeting of Community Board 1 (CB1) included an update about long-planned improvements to the East River Esplanade, some of which are being cancelled.

Paul Goldstein, the chair of CB1’s Waterfront, Parks & Cultural Committee, said, “we got a report from Economic Development Corporation [EDC] regarding some of their waterfront assets and projects that are ongoing—or not.” (The EDC is a not-profit corporation controlled by City government, which oversees development of assets, such as publicly owned property.)

“Unfortunately, a lot this project is not moving ahead for a variety of reasons,” Mr. Goldstein explained, “the biggest one being that the City is focusing much more on resiliency, and they don’t want to go ahead with improvements that may interfere with that.” To read more…

Lower Manhattan Greenmarkets

Tribeca Greenmarket

Greenwich Street & Chambers Street

Every Wednesday & Saturday, 8am-3pm

Food Scrap Collection: Saturdays, 8am-1pm

Open Saturdays and Wednesdays year round

Bowling Green Greenmarket

Green Greenmarket at Bowling Green

Broadway & Whitehall St

Open Tuesday and Thursdays, year-round

Market Hours: 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Compost Program: 8 a.m. – 11 a.m.

The Bowling Green Greenmarket brings fresh offerings from local farms to Lower Manhattan’s historic Bowling Green plaza. Twice a week year-round stop by to load up on the season’s freshest fruit, crisp vegetables, beautiful plants, and freshly baked loaves of bread, quiches, and pot pies.

The Outdoor Fulton Stall Market

91 South St., bet. Fulton & John Sts.

212-349-1380 info@fultonstallmarket.org

Fulton Street cobblestones between South and Front Sts. across from McNally Jackson Bookstore.

Locally grown produce from Rogowski Farm, Breezy Hill Orchard, and other farmers and small-batch specialty food products, sold directly by their producers. Producers vary from week to week.

SNAP/EBT/P-EBT, Debit/Credit, and Farmers Market Nutrition Program checks accepted at all farmers markets.

Today in History

March 25

1609 – Henry Hudson embarks on an exploration for the Dutch East India Co.

421 – City of Venice founded

708 – Constantine begins his reign as Catholic Pope

1584 – Sir Walter Raleigh renews Humphrey Gilbert’s patent to explore North America

1609 – Henry Hudson embarks on an exploration for the Dutch East India Co.

1655 – Christiaan Huygens discovers Titan (Saturn’s largest satellite)

1807 – First railway passenger service began in England

1811 – Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from the University of Oxford for his publication of the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism.

1851 – Yosemite Valley discovered in California

1882 – First demonstration of pancake making in a department store in NYC

1916 – Women are allowed to attend a boxing match

1937 – It is revealed Quaker Oats pays Babe Ruth $25,000 per year for ads

1937 – Washington Daily News is first US newspaper with perfumed advertising page

1944 – RAF Flight Sgt Nicholas Alkemade survives a jump from his Lancaster bomber from 18,000 feet over Germany without a parachute; his fall was broken by pine trees and soft snow, and he suffered only a sprained leg.

1946 – First performance of Igor Stravinsky’s “Ebony Concerto”

1954 – RCA manufactures first color TV set (12½” screen at $1,000)

1961 – Sputnik 10 carries a dog into Earth orbit; the dog survived the trip. The vehicle flew a nominal single-orbit flight with dog Zvezdouchka and a dummy cosmonaut. The only anomaly was that it landed in snow and was not found for a day.

1970 – Concorde makes its first supersonic flight (700 MPH/1,127 KPH)

1990 – Fire in illegal NYC social club, kills 87

Josef Albers “Homage To The Square”

Births

1133 – Henry II, King of England (1154-89)

1867 – Gutzon Borglum, sculptor (Mt Rushmore)

1881 – Béla Bartok, Hungary, composer/pianist (Concerto for Orchestra)

1911 – Jack Ruby, killer of Lee Harvey Oswald (d. 1967)

1934 – Gloria Steinem, Toledo Ohio, US feminist/publisher (Ms Magazine)

1947 – Elton John, [Reginald Kenneth Dwight], England, singer

Josef Albers was a German-born artist and educator. The first living artist to be given a solo shows at MoMa and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he taught at the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College, headed Yale University’s department of design, and is considered one of the most influential teachers of the visual arts in the twentieth century. As an artist, Albers worked in several disciplines, including photography, typography, murals and printmaking. He is best known for his work as an abstract painter and a theorist. (Wikipedia) Photo by Arnold Newman.

Deaths

1918 – Claude Debussy, French composer (Iberia/La mer), dies in Paris at 55

1973 – Edward Steichen, pioneer of US photography, dies at 93

1975 – Faisal of Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabian king (b. 1906)

1976 – Josef Albers, German-American painter and educator (b. 1888)

1988 – Robert Joffrey, American dancer, choreographer, and director, co-founded the Joffrey Ballet (b. 1930)

1999 – Cal Ripken, Sr., American baseball player, coach, and manager (b. 1936)

2013 – Anthony Lewis, American journalist and academic (b. 1927)

2021 – Beverly Cleary, American author (b. 1916)

Credit: Wikipedia and other internet and non-internet sources

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