A Hidden Lower East Side

(The East River Park Amphitheater, built in 1941, which will be destroyed when the city moves forward with its new "Preferred Alternative Plan" for the ESCR)       With little fanfare this past Thursday, March 14th, the De Blasio administration announced that they would be pursuing new plans for the East River Park and Lower Manhattan shoreline; not only presenting additional designs for extending Lower Manhattan up to two blocks into the river, but implementing a new phased-construction plan for the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project (known as ESCR). In September, the city revealed that they would be abandoning previous designs for the ESCR, in favor of a new plan which "involves completely destroying East River park, 'elevating' it with 8 feet of landfill, and rebuilding a new park on top." That disastrous proposal was met with a predictably disastrous response from local residents, politicians, and community advocacy groups. Organized in the w...

      At the end of this past February, Community Board 3 put their support behind the Cooper Square Committee Land Trust as a part of their broader motion to halt the planned $50,000,000 sale of the Church of the Nativity on Second Ave: " Community Board 3 urges the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, as well as other religious institutions, to declare a moratorium on the disposition of any Catholic Church or other religiously-owned and decommissioned properties for one year from the date the proposed Town Hall meeting is held to discuss alternative scenarios formulated by the broader community. " The full text of this motion can be read here , where CB3 lists seven primary reasons which should compel the Archdiocese to heed their call; from the Pope's general call for increased community participation, to the urgent need for affordable/senior housing in the neighborhood, and generally combat the implications of displacement on low-income families, the homeless,...

          If you end up down on Madison and Saint James, near the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, you've stepped into the area of the Lower East Side formerly known as the Fourth Ward. With Five Points just to its west, the Fourth Ward composed part of the East River shoreline and is generally folded in with the old Corlear's Hook neighborhood (also known as the "Hook", where once almost one hundred brothels were located and the term "hooker" was coined). This area of Lower Manhattan, around the time of Robert "Roxie" Vanella's birth in 1883, was largely occupied by ship-builders, dockyards, and the assorted tenement. The triangular block that Vanella's Funeral Chapel sits on also houses the former St. James School, noted as the only site of Alfred E. Smith's formal education (who was only ten years Vanella's senior), and neighbors the St. James Church, the second oldest Roman Catholic building in NYC and the home of the Ancien...

           It’s Ash Wednesday, and the Lower East Side will reportedly be giving up another cultural holdout, Moishe’s Kosher Bake Shop on 2nd Ave. Moishe’s is rumored to have started on Houston in the late 1960’s before moving to its location at 115 Second Avenue in the mid-70’s, meaning that it has been in operation for close to 50 years in one form or another. While Moishe Perl seems to have indicated to various people that the business is closed, by the time I got to Moishe’s myself a little while ago, brown paper covered the windows and door, and a sign placed in the window read “Closed for renovation, reopen as soon as possible, special order please call owner (347) 203-9842”. When I called the number, Moishe  Perl picked up the phone, but wouldn't give a clear answer to what the future of the building was before the call cut out.        The last interaction I had with Moishe was at the end of last week when I stopped b...

(Beth Hamedrash Hagodol in May, 2017 - days after it was burnt down)       Last week, after almost two years, plans for the remains of Beth Hamedrash Hagadol synagogue became public. The Gotham Organization, in partnership with the Chinese American Planning Council, who own the parking lot behind the synagogue and operate the Hong Ning Housing for the Elderly building (seen to the right of the synagogue in the photo above), revealed their dazzling new renderings  for multiple glass high-rises at 60 Norfolk Street.      Two structures are proposed, a 30-story mixed-use building (the "Suffolk Building"), and a 16-story residence for seniors (the "Norfolk Building"), pledging up to 55% of the residential square-footage to affordable units. The Suffolk Building will house around 19,000sf of commercial real estate, as well as the new headquarters of the Chinese American Planning Council; and the Norfolk Building will provide almost 3,800sf of...