Posts from — January 2008

Staten Island Borough Hall by nautical2k on Flickr.

Molinari on Rudy’s Campaign Strategy: ‘Dumbest Thing That I Ever Saw’ (SI Advance)

The If and When Race for Manhattan DA (City Hall News)

Time to Talk NYC Secession (Gothamist)

City Council Bill to Limit Homework (NY Sun)

Sultry Aide Waxing Congressman’s Weiner? (NY Observer)

Council Votes To Repeal MSG Tax Abatement (NY1)

Political dog fight at WagWear.

This morning’s meeting of the City Council Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Committee began with a moment of silence for firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino, who were killed in the fire at the former Deutsche Bank Building this past summer. On the committee’s agenda were efforts to protect workers and the public when demolition on the site resumes.

Lower Manhattan Development Corporation Chairman Avi Schick asserted that the remaining floors of the building would be down by the end of this year if all goes as planned. However, the LMDC has yet to set a date for restarting the work. New York City based LVI Services, whose president and CEO Robert A. McNamara (pictured above) also spoke at the hearing, has been selected as the new demolition contractor.

Promised by the LMDC are safety improvements including the construction of two sheltered stairways that will run from the basement to the top floor, “round-the-clock, 24/7 site-safety personnel on the building…whether work is going on or not” to monitor progress, and a different approach to decontamination that will clean out the entire building first and then demolish the floors instead of doing both floor by floor.

While the city waits wait for work to begin again on the site, it also waits for answers to the innumerable unanswered questions about the contracts, shady deals, mismanagement, and tragic incompetence that surrounded the fire and deaths last August.

Mayor LaGuardia reads the comics for the kiddies on his radio show “Talk to the People” during the seventeen-day newspaper strike in 1945. We find out that the moral of the day’s Dick Tracy cartoon is “Dirty money never brings any luck.”

Take a quick walk through the East Village and you’ll find that 110 Third has lost its scaffolding, opening up its lobby to both natural light and the prying eyes to which its tenants are already accustomed.

They’re also putting on the finishing touches over at the ‘A Building’ on East 13th Street. But what they’re also putting up are the same bafflingly ineffective accordion window shades that one can find over on Third Avenue. At least some of the shades on the ‘A’ make it down to the air conditioning unit (see below), but we’ll have to wait and see whether building management whips out the frosting.

110 Third windows (upper image); A Building windows (lower image); Crappy window shades (both images)

More photos after the jump.

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Maybe I Should Move by Sister72 on Flickr.

In the event of a major incident in New York City, the newly developed Trans-Hudson Emergency Transportation Plan would use the river as a central evacuation route and would conscript public and private harbor ships to carry New York evacuees to Liberty State Park in New Jersey. The Post reports that the plan was formulated after subways and tunnels were closed in the wake of 2003 blackout, disrupting the commutes of thousands. Private ferry lines, charter cruise ships, and the Staten Island Ferries would all be pressed into service to get people across the Hudson to the safety of Jersey City.

According to the story, “depending on the nature of the crisis, evacuees gathered at the state park in Jersey City would be allowed to return home or be transported by NJ Transit buses to shelters throughout the Garden State and Staten Island…The new plan could be activated during any number of scenarios, from a blackout to a hurricane to a terrorist attack.”

On September 11th, 2001 over 300,000 people were evacuated from Lower Manhattan by a variety of local watercraft that responded to the Coast Guard’s call for ‘All available boats.’ You can listen to the riveting stories of the captains and crews of these rescue vessels here.

Democracity by AllWaysNY on Flickr.

Theme Exhibit of New York World’s Fair 1939–The interior of the 200-foot Perisphere at the Theme Center of the Exposition which contains an exhibit by Henry Dreyfuss, industrial designer, summing up the Fair’s theme, “Building the World of Tomorrow.” Visitors standing on two platforms suspended in space and revolving in opposite directions are shown gazing down on “Democracity,” the planned and integrated garden city of tomorrow.

The History Channel has rolled out a new set of ads for its upcoming premiere of ‘Life After People’ on Monday at 9 P.M. They include image-shifting phone booths that depict the Photoshop-assisted deterioration of the Brooklyn Bridge after hundreds of years of neglect. The show is based on the book The World Without Us by Alan Weisman and highlighted in an article in Scientific American. It’s essentially one big thought experiment that explores what would happen across the planet if the human race was to simply up and disappear. We see in The Fall of New York City that the subways would flood, buildings and roads would crack and crumble due to the freeze/thaw cycle, and our grand suspension bridges would fall in about 300 years.

The program will also look at the fate of our furry companions. Large dogs and house cats should do fine (we all knew that we need cats more than they need us), but according to the show’s site the Fifis of the world may have some difficulty adjusting to life without humans:

Bred over hundreds of years to be smaller, easier to care for and to require less food and exercise, small breeds of dogs, like the ever-popular chihuahuas, Yorkshire terriers and pugs, will have difficulty staying alive after the demise of their owners. Although they can be highly intelligent, these small dogs have short legs and little strength or endurance, which will make it difficult for them to compete for food-if they can even make it out of the house, the first test of their survival. The smallest dogs probably won’t last a week without humans.

Below: Future MetLife Building not doing so hot.

Redecorating by AllWaysNY on Flickr.

Developer Tip #37: Humdrum scaffolding got you down? One trip to the fabric store and presto, an instant lovers lane that will be the envy of the block!

The Loews Paradise Theater is one of the brightest gems along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. Designed by John Eberson and completed in 1929 (six weeks before the stock market crash), the $4 million Paradise seated 4,000 moviegoers. It featured a grand lobby, grand balcony, grand restrooms, and atmospheric effects that included glowing stars and simulated clouds floating across the ceiling. The theater closed its doors in 1994 after being chopped up into a duplex in the 1970s and a quad in the 1980s. It re-opened in October 2005 as a concert and special event space.

Learn more about Marcus Loew, a pioneer of the movie palace concept.

More photos after the jump. Click on each for all image sizes.

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