The BroadsheetDAILY ~ News of Lower Manhattan ~ 12/17/19

Epicenter of a Notorious Slum Proposed for Commemoration

The Five Points gang, a criminal organization that drew its members from the ethnic immigrant populations that inhabited the neighborhood.

In 1831, the City government considered a petition that warned, “that the place known as “Five points” has long been notorious… as being the nursery where every species of vice is conceived and matured; that it is infested by a class of the most abandoned and desperate character.”

A decade later, Charles Dickens, visiting New York, wrote of the same Lower Manhattan neighborhood that had inspired the petition, “what place is this, to which the squalid street conducts us? A kind of square of leprous houses, some of which are attainable only by crazy wooden stairs without. What lies behind this tottering flight of steps? Let us go on again, and plunge into the Five Points…. Debauchery has made the very houses prematurely old. See how the rotten beams are tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows seem to scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in drunken forays.” Of the inhabitants, he observed, “pigs live here. Do they ever wonder why their masters walk upright instead of going on all fours, and why they talk instead of grunting?”

An 1851 map illustrating the Five Points neighborhood of Lower Manhattan.

The locus of this iniquity was a junction formed by three streets, the names of which have all been changed: Orange Street (now called Baxter), Cross Street (today known as Mosco Street), and Anthony Street (familiar to contemporary residents as Worth Street). The convergence of a third lane gave the intersection five corners, rather than the usual four. Hence the name: “Five Points.”

It was here that generations of impoverished immigrants gathered: waves of Irish, Italian, and Chinese newcomers mingled with newly emancipated slaves in the decades after the Civil War. They were drawn to housing made affordable by its squalor. In the early years of the 19th century, the City had filled in the nearby Collect Pond, hoping to eradicate the health hazard created by a decades of industrial pollution. Because hydrology was poorly understood at the time, they succeeded only in creating a swamp, which drew pestilential clouds of disease-carrying insects. The soggy ground was also nearly as detrimental to the buildings erected upon it, which quickly began to sink into the mud. As middle-class residents fled northward, they were replaced by destitute migrants. Some of these strangers in a stranger land banded together for mutual support, forming ethnic gangs that competed violently for local dominance. Although precise statistics are lost in the fog of history, scholars believe that by the middle of the century, Five Points had the highest murder rate of any urban ghetto in the world.

An 1885 newspaper sketch depicts “respectable” New Yorkers being escorted through the Five Points slum, safeguarded by a police officer.

In what may have been America’s first experiment with slum clearance, the City decided to erase the entire neighborhood from its map in the late 1800s. Blocks of tenements were emptied, condemned, and demolished. On this land, the growing municipal government erected civic temples in which to house its courts, prisons, and dozens of other agencies.

The names of most of the surrounding streets were changed. Some thoroughfares, like Little Water Street, vanished completely. Some were elongated, like Worth Street, which was stretched eastward to Chatham Square, cutting off Baxter and Mulberry Streets as it went. And others were truncated, such as Mosco Street, which was shortened to its current, one-block length, so that architect and landscape designer Calvert Vaux (fresh from completing his masterpiece, Central Park) could create Mulberry Bend Park — now known as Columbus Park. (It opened two years after Vaux’s death, in 1895, but was renamed for the discoverer of the New World in 1911.)

As a result, the five-angled intersection no longer exists. Its closest remnant is the junction of Baxter and Worth Streets, where there is no marker or relic recalling the history of the Five Points.

All that remains of the Five Points today, the intersection of Worth and Baxter Streets, with Columbus Park in the background.

At the November 21 meeting of Community Board 1,  Lloyd Trufelman, representing the Municipal Art Society, said, “as many of you may know, Five Points was a historic neighborhood in Lower Manhattan that vanished over a century ago. Sadly, not a trace of it remains. Although long gone, Five Points played an important historical and cultural role in the City’s early development with regards to immigration, integration, and political and labor trends. A co-naming sign at Worth and Baxter Streets would mark its epicenter.”

This proposal was endorsed by the Historic Districts Council and Columbia University history professor Kenneth Jackson (editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of New York), along with the the Municipal Arts Society.

Later in the meeting, CB1 enacted a resolution endorsing the proposal, and acknowledging that, “posting a Five Points sign on the small triangular plot at Worth and Baxter Streets would recognize the lives of tens of thousands of 19th century Irish, Italian, Chinese and Jewish immigrants as well as the free African-Americans who lived together in this notorious slum where they faced considerable poverty and adversity while helping to make New York City the melting pot that it is today.”

With CB1’s support, the plan will next come before the City Council, which has the final say over street co-naming proposals.

Well, this is an interesting development: both the Hurricane Maria Memorial and a statue of St. Frances Cabrini gracing our neighborhood!

2) Proposed Charging Bull Relocation to New York Stock Exchange Area, Public Design Commission Application – Presentation by NYC Department of Transportation and resolution* (Cancelled)

3) Historic Vessels Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEI) – Presentation by Hudson River Park Trust (Postponed until January)

City Landmarks Agency Agrees with CB1 about “Disaster and Affront”

A view of the facade proposed for 11 Hubert Street, which Mr. Ehrmann describes as, “a prison, guarding the residents from us.”

The City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission has concurred with Community Board 1 about a builder’s proposed plan for a new mansion at Hubert and Collister Streets, within the Tribeca West Historic District.

At its December 3 meeting, the LPC’s commissioners listened to a presentation from the builder and his team of architects.

When the presentation was done, the commissioners were unanimous in their disapproval.  To read more…

Cuomo Administration Decides on South Cove for Mother Cabrini Memorial

	The planting bed, south of South Cove, that the administration of Governor Andrew Cuomo has selected as the site for a memorial to Mother Cabrini.

On Friday, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that a planned memorial to Mother Cabrini — a 19th-century Italian-American who founded more than 60 organizations to help New York’s needy, and later became the first naturalized U.S. citizen to be canonized a Catholic saint — will be sited in the planting beds south of South Cove, the Battery Park City inlet at the foot of South End Avenue.

“This memorial will honor the legacy of Mother Cabrini — a great New Yorker and Italian-American — and the Commission chose a site that perfectly symbolizes her commitment to helping new Americans settle in the United States,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. “We want this memorial to pay tribute to the charity and goodwill she spread to countless others in her lifetime.”

Howard Hughes Practices Corporate Citizenship in the Seaport

	Howard Hughes staffers volunteering at the Bowery Mission.

If the giving season is an appropriate time to take stock of local philanthropy, one Lower Manhattan stakeholder has amassed an impressive record of thinking globally and acting locally.  To read more…

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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 passenger and propulsion problems, tides, fog, winds, freak waves, hurricanes and the whims of upper management.

Plan Floated to Span East River with Arch Containing Thousands of Apartments and New Transit Portal

	A view (looking northward, along the FDR Drive) lends perspective on what will, if built, be the largest building in the world in terms of interior square feet of space.

To those who claim that the age of monumental public works and historic pieces of civic infrastructure has ended in New York, Scott Baker has a succinct answer: “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

Mr. Baker is the brains and the propulsive force behind an audacious new proposal to span the East River with a hybrid structure that would be part building, part bridge, and part mass transit conveyance, connecting the Dumbo/Vinegar Hill section of Brooklyn to the Manhattan neighborhood of Two Bridges.

Mr. Baker calls his plan, “RiverArch,” and describes it as, “a way to transform the skyline and the City with a structure like no other in the world, while also housing thousands of people and generating hundreds of millions of dollars per year in new tax revenue.”

Pondering Whether $300 Million and 16.5 Feet of Protection Will Matter

85 Broad Street parking garage after Sandy

At the October 29 meeting of the Battery Park City Authority board, Catherine McVay Hughes raised a potentially troubling question. As BPCA management reviewed plans to spend some $300 million on resiliency measures designed to protect the community against future sea-level rise, extreme-weather events, and climate change, she questioned one of the key assumptions upon which these plans are predicated.

“I think a lot of folks are looking at the depth-to-design elevation flood line,” Ms. McVay Hughes began. “And there was a report that was recently issued… [in which]  this technical expert suggested that the 16.5 feet needs to be raised another two to three feet. So I just wanted to make sure that what the Battery Park City will be planning to do will be adequate, as well.”

The metric to which Ms. McVay Hughes was referring comes from the lower end of the mid-range of predicted coastal flood heights for Lower Manhattan by the 2080s. A 2014 report by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, entitled “Climate Change in New York State,” noted that middle range for such predictions at the Battery was 16.5 to 18.3 feet. (The lowest bracket was 16.1 feet or less, while the most extreme scenarios ranged up to 19.9 feet.)

How a Nazi Sympathizer’s Tribeca Garage Could Become a Luxe Mansion

	The builder’s plans call for a 17,000-square-foot private home that will contain four bedrooms, ten bathrooms, a multi-car garage, and a basement-level indoor basketball court, as well as outdoor patio above street level.

Community Board 1 is pushing back, in unusually emphatic terms, against a builder’s plans for a new mansion in Tribeca. The property in question is located at 11 Hubert Street, near the corner of Collister Street.

The existing structure at 11 Hubert Street has a tangled pedigree. It was built in 1946 by Dietrich Wortman, who was born in Leipzig, Germany, in 1884, and emigrated to the United States, where he studied architecture at Columbia University.

Yesterday’s sunset, earliest of the year, down to the second, is at 4:28:30pm. Sunset time is seconds later beginning tomorrow, until it is nearly one minute later, 4:29:27 on December 15. Afternoons will be noticeably lighter by month’s end. Sunrise today, 7:08:02, is 12 minutes earlier than the latest sunrise, 7:20:13 on January 6.  To read more…

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A Living Remnant of a Vibrant Culture Comes to Battery Place

	“The Sorceress”

Written in 1878, “The Sorceress,” is one of the earliest works of Yiddish theater and the first formal theatrical production presented in America by the legendary Boris Thomashefsky, who emigrated to the United States in 1881, two years before the thriving Yiddish theater industry was banned in his native Imperial Russia.

He went on to found, almost singlehandedly, what became a vibrant genre in American theater — productions catering to Jewish immigrants from all the countries in the diaspora, presented in the one language they all spoke: Yiddish.

A Convenient Connection to the Airport Visible from Lower Manhattan Rooftops May Be Less Than Ten Years Away

	Seen from Newark Airport, the spires of Lower Manhattan appear almost close enough to touch. But antiquated transportation infrastructure makes the trip to Lower Manhattan, in some cases, longer than the flights from which travelers arriving at the airport have just disembarked.

The Regional Plan Association (RPA) recently partnered with the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association (DLMA) to build support for a proposed rail connection between Lower Manhattan and Newark Airport. A report the two organizations produced together, “Taking the PATH to Newark Airport,” summarizes the potential and the prospects for such a link, which local leaders have long pushed for.

Community-Focused Cultural Center Faces Uncertain Future, as Tourism Magnet Thrives

	The 9/11 Tribute Museum, at 88 Greenwich Street, which is endangered by skyrocketing property values in Lower Manhattan.

The 9/11 Tribute Museum, a highly regarded local cultural institution, is grappling with a precarious outlook, according to a story first published in Crain’s New York Business, which says that the space housing the facility, located at Greenwich and Rector Streets, may be sold out from under the organization by its landlord.

Council Member and Borough President Push for Transparency in Development

A proposed law now under consideration by the City Council would compel disclosure of air rights transfers that make possible “super-tall” towers, such as the one planned for 80 South Street, which would have a roof height greater than that of One World Trade Center.

Community Board 1 has endorsed a proposed new law — sponsored by a City Council member representing the Upper East Side and supported by Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer — that would require City government to notify local officials whenever development rights are transferred between building lots. Such transfers are often used by developers to maximize the zoning potential for the site of a planned skyscraper.

Your Next Neighbors Might Be Vastly Less Interesting, But Better Able to Pay High Rents

	Even as public art proliferates in Lower Manhattan artists themselves are being driven from the area by skyrocketing housing costs, a new report finds.

A new report from City Comptroller Scott Stringer documents that Lower Manhattan is undergoing an exodus of artists and other “creative economy” workers, who are being driven away primarily by skyrocketing costs for housing.

 To read more…

FiDi Renters Seek Recompense for Years of Rent Overcharges; Landlord Asks U.S. Supreme Court to Overrule Tenants’ Victory

A map, compiled by New York University’s Furman Center (which advances research and debate on housing, neighborhoods, and urban policy)illustrating the dozens of Lower Manhattan buildings — erstwhile office towers,converted to residential use — that have benefited from the 421-g program.

More Financial District tenants are going to court to demand restitution from years of illegally high rent, on the heels of a June ruling by New York State’s highest court, which found that as many as 5,000 Lower Manhattan apartments had been illegally deprived of rent stabilization benefits.

The first to file suit in the wake of this decision were Bruce Hackney and Timothy Smith, tenants at Ten Hanover Square, who brought their complaint in October.

At issue is the 421-g subsidy program, which was designed to encourage Downtown’s transformation into a residential district, by offering rich incentives (chiefly in the form of tax abatements) to developers who converted former office buildings — south of a line connecting Murray Street to City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge — into apartment towers.

Decades of Savings Needed to Purchase on Lavish Lanes

A trio of new analyses points to the self-evident conclusion that Lower Manhattan is a mind-numbingly expensive place to reside.

Tribeca’s Murray Street was calculated to be the third-most expensive anywhere in the five boroughs, with a median sales price of $5.4 million, and a volume of sales in excess of $364 million. To read more…

Nadler Sponsors Legislation to Make Lower Manhattan Heliopolis No More

Support is building among decision-makers to heed a decade long call by Lower Manhattan community leaders to enact a comprehensive ban on non-essential helicopter flights in New York’s airspace.

 To read more…

Seaport Structure Reborn as Flood-Proof Food Emporia as Owner Celebrates with Support for Local Charity

	The Tin Building as it will appear in 2021

The South Street Seaport’s historic Tin Building reached a milestone on Wednesday, when the last and highest structural beam was placed (after being ceremonially signed by dozens of well-wishers) within a reconstructed edifice, following an unprecedented, years-long effort to preserve it.

FiDi Renters Seek Recompense for Years of Rent Overcharges

	A map, compiled by New York University’s Furman Center (which advances research and debate on housing, neighborhoods, and urban policy) illustrating the dozens of Lower Manhattan buildings — erstwhile office towers, converted to residential use — that have benefited from the 421-g program.

In the wake of a June ruling by New York State’s highest court that tenants in Financial District rental buildings had been illegally deprived of rent stabilization benefits, a pair of apartment dwellers is litigating to recoup the money they lost by paying inflated, market-rate rents for years.

In October, Bruce Hackney and Timothy Smith, tenants at Ten Hanover Square, filed suit against their landlord, alleging that the owner’s, “failure to follow rent regulations was part of a fraudulent scheme to deregulate apartments in the building.” To read more…

Schools Agency Begins Belated Outreach Effort to Former Lower Manhattan Students at Risk of 9/11 Illness

The City’s Department of Education is partnering with the United Federation of Teachers union for an unusual mission: tracking down former New York City public school students who were pupils at Lower Manhattan schools on September 11, 2001 (or in the months that followed) and informing them that their health may be at risk. The project will also seek to put these students in touch with the World Trade Center Health Program and the September 11th Victims Compensation Fund. To read more…

Chin Pushes Legislation to Rein in Production Permits

	A late-night film shoot on  Tribeca’s Staple Street

City Council member Margaret Chin is co-sponsoring a package of bills to clamp down on rampant film and television production in Lower Manhattan.

Although the new laws, if enacted, will have City-wide effect, their impact would be especially significant in the square mile below Chambers Street, where dozens of movies and TV shows commandeer local streets (sometimes for days at a time) each year.  To read more…

Lawsuit Over Similarity Between One World Trade and Architecture Student’s Design Moves Ahead

Jeehoon Park’s 1999 design for a skyscraper with eight sides that taper between a square base and a square roof.

One thing is reasonably certain: In 1999, Jeehoon Park, then a student at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture, created a design for a very tall building with a large square base tapering to a smaller square top. In Mr. Park’s vision, the square formed by the roof was rotated 45 degrees relative to the one at the ground level, so that the center-points on each side of the quadrilateral below corresponded to the corners of the one above, and vice versa. And instead of four vertical walls, the structure’s facade consisted of eight elongated triangles.

That structure was never built. Or was it?

Amid a Booming Economy, Lower Manhattan Retail Space Languishes

	Vacant storefronts dot Downtown

A new report from City Comptroller Scott Stringer finds that in one Lower Manhattan zip code — 10013, which covers parts of western Tribeca SoHo, and the Canal Street corridor in Chinatown — there are 319 empty retail spaces, comprising almost 300,000 square feet of unused property.

BPCA Puts the Brakes on Conversions of Rental Buildings within Community

	In an instant, both wagon and horse were vaporized, and the closest automobile was tossed twenty feet 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.