The BroadsheetDAILY ~ News of Lower Manhattan 10/4/19

Lower Manhattan’s Old Syrian Quarter to Be Recalled in Sunday Walking Tour

This map from 1899 highlights the area of the Lower West Side known as “Little Syria”, which a walking tour on Sunday will highlight.

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.

Syrian food seller at Battery Place

But the immigrants who flocked here were Arabs, and the neighborhood was called, “Little Syria.” Greenwich Street was for newcomers from Damascus, Beirut, and Jerusalem, what Mulberry Street was for Italian transplants and Canal Street was for the Chinese. Their life was centered beneath the Ninth Avenue Elevated Train, which ran along Greenwich Street. (As difficult as it is to envision this perilously narrow lane accommodating a railroad viaduct, it did — and the station at Rector Street was the center of their small town.) The social and spiritual focus of the community was St. Joseph’s Maronite Church, for most of the Arabic-speaking immigrants who lived here were Christian (of the Maronite and Melkite sects), rather than Muslim.

On Sunday (October 6), starting at 11:00 am, local historian Joe Svehlak (one of the founders of the preservation group, Friends of the Lower West Side) will partner with the Municipal Art Society to lead a walking tour of this urban relic, which was once regarded as the “Mother Colony” of all Arab immigration to the United States. The tour will view remnants of this once-vibrant neighborhood (including a former Syrian Catholic church, the Downtown Community House, and the few remaining tenements and Federal Era townhouses), as Mr. Svehlak discusses issues of planning, preservation and development, as well as the immigrant experience of his own family, who loved there more a hundred years ago.

The saga that Mr. Svehlak will recall is a somber one. In the 1940s, construction of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel erased many square blocks of the neighborhood. By 1946, the New York Times would observe with grim prescience that, “Washington Street, at the lower end of Manhattan Island, is today a condemned street. From Rector Street to Battery Place, all the people who live there and run restaurants and spice shops and Oriental bakeries and newspapers have received notice to vacate.”

During this period, the construction of the West Side Elevated Highway also cut off Little Syria from the surrounding area. St. Joseph’s Church, which stood where the Battery Parking Garage is now located, was demolished. (It’s cornerstone was found in excavation of debris from the World Trade Center site in 2002.) In the 1950s, the Ninth Avenue El taken out of service and its tracks torn down, further isolating the neighborhood. As New York’s status as a port declined and nearby docks were abandoned, the constant stream of imports that was the economic lifeblood for the community withered. (In the 1970s, those piers would finally be demolished to make way for the landfill that became Battery Park City.) But Little Syria’s ultimate death knell was the construction of the World Trade Center, beginning in the late 1960s, which seized several more blocks of the community, and effectively sealed its northern border. The small remnant of the 100,000-plus Arab population that had once lived there decamped for Brooklyn, where Atlantic Avenue is now the thoroughfare that Washington and Greenwich Streets were.

An engraving from the early years of the 20th century illustrates a streetscape in Little Syria, in the shadow of Lower Manhattan’s Financial District.

Last year, the Historic Districts Council (HDC) — a non-profit organization that advocates for the preservation of significant historic neighborhoods, buildings and public spaces throughout New York City — shortlisted the community as an area worthy of protection. “Prior to the construction of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and the World Trade Center, the area from roughly Liberty Street to Battery Place west of Broadway was host to a vibrant immigrant neighborhood called the Lower West Side,” HDC noted in its designation. “Initially populated by Irish and German immigrants, it later became a Middle Eastern enclave (known as the ‘Syrian Quarter’ or ‘Little Syria’) and was subsequently home to a large Slavic population. The area’s major redevelopment in the mid-20th century nearly wiped the neighborhood off the map, but several buildings still exist to tell the story.”

The HDC has partnered with a Friends of the Lower West Side to focus public attention and mobilize popular support for efforts to save the structures that remain from that era. HDC’s executive director, Simeon Bankoff, says “neighborhoods throughout New York are fighting an unseen struggle to determine their own futures. By bringing these locally-driven neighborhood preservation efforts into the spotlight, HDC hopes to focus New Yorkers’ attention on the very real threats that historic communities throughout the City are facing from indiscriminate and inappropriate development. And the Friends of the Lower West Side is determined to make sure this history is not lost. They will appeal to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission to protect a small area of significance, as well as expand its oral history program, publish a written history, and offer walking tours to raise awareness.”

Current preservation efforts are focused on a pair of historic buildings on Washington Street, between Rector and Carlisle Streets. The southernmost of the pair, located at 105-107 Washington Street, is the former Downtown Community House, which was opened in 1926 to serve the then-thriving immigrant community. Next door is 109 Washington Street, the last surviving tenement apartment building on lower Washington Street, which once held upwards of 50 households, and was populated by a cross-section of the neighborhood’s melting-pot diversity.

	Todd Fine

“These are very important buildings,” argues Todd Fine, a founder of the preservation group, Save Washington Street, and president of the Washington Street Historical Society. “Local historians have been pushing for the preservation of these buildings since 2003. The Lower West Side of Manhattan is one of the most diverse areas in the history of the United States.”

Mr. Fine cites a concern related to the Lower West Side as a whole rather than specific structures within it, which speaks to the heart of the HDC’s designation of the area. “There are broadly protected Historic Districts on the Lower East Side, in Greenwich Village, and in Tribeca,” he notes. “But in one of the oldest parts of the City, there is no such protection.”

This appears to be the case. While Lower Manhattan has small Historic Districts surrounding Stone Street and Fraunces Tavern, and slightly larger enclaves surrounding City Hall and the South Street Seaport, there is no blanket protection for the community as a whole. Within Historic Districts, all buildings are accorded a baseline level of legal protection, which entails heightened official scrutiny before any structure can be demolished.

Sunday’s two-hour walking tour will begin at 11:00 am. For more information, or to reserve tickets (priced at $20 for Municipal Art Society members, and $30 for the general public), please browse: www.mas.org/events/downtown-manhattans-lost-neighborhood/.

Services will be in English (and Hebrew) blended with contemporary messages throughout the service and simultaneously

have an exciting children’s service.

* Fun Kids Program

* Lively, Meaningful and Enjoyable Services

* Warm and welcoming environment

* Rosh Hashanah Dinner at the Wall St Grill – FiDi’s newest Kosher Steakhouse

Location: Andaz Wall Street at 75 Wall Street in the Financial District

Council Member Chin Invites Ideas for Spending $1 Million in Public Funds

	Margaret Chin: “Participatory budgeting will introduce even more New Yorkers into the democratic process, including kids. The next few weeks are critical, as we want as many ideas for capital projects from as many parts of Lower Manhattan as possible.”

Tonight (Thursday, October 3) Lower Manhattan residents will gather at the Downtown Community Center (120 Warren Street, near the corner of West Street) to help decide how $1 million of their tax dollars are spent. City Council member Margaret Chin will host a session of her participatory budgeting campaign, which invites constituents to propose how approximately 17 percent of her discretionary budget (which totals around $5.7 million) will be allocated.

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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

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

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.”

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

National Lighthouse Museum

 200 The Promenade at Lighthouse Point, Staten Island

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.

	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.

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…