The local paper for Downtown wn LAURIE ANDERSON RIFFS ◄ P.12
WEEK OF MAY
17-23 2018
A NEW VISION FOR WALL STREET DEVELOPMENT Plan reimagines New York Stock Exchange district with curbless shared streets, improved lighting and seating BY MICHAEL GAROFALO
From the steps of Federal Hall, where George Washington was inaugurated in 1789, a statue of the first president gazes on in bronze across Wall Street toward the marble façade New York Stock Exchange. The streets around the stock exchange are some of Manhattan’s oldest. The neoclassical grandeur of the district’s architecture communicates permanence, prestige, history. The streetscape itself? Less so. “Eurocobble” paving installed in the 2000s to evoke the narrow streets’ colonial past is deteriorated and pockmarked. Moveable police fencing surrounding the stock exchange building is a permanent presence, and a vinylsided tent fit for a lawn party serves as a security checkpoint. Traffic is restricted in much of the district, but streets where vehicles are permitted are regularly clogged by delivery trucks idling on sidewalks and shoulders. Entrances to pedestrian portions of Wall and Broad Streets are choked with imposing security barriers installed after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. Tourists jostle with residents and workers to navigate the passageway to Broadway at Wall Street’s western terminus — an already slender corridor in which pedestrians are further constricted by security fencing and scaffolding that takes up much of the street. “Let’s face it: the area has been stuck, to some extent, in a time warp since 9/11,” said Tom Farley, the president of NYSE Group and the co-chair of a committee of local stakeholders call-
“C & C Cola,” Belvedere Castle, Central Park, 1978. Photographer unknown
THE SUMMER OF ‘78, IN LIVING COLOR Renderings released by Downtown Alliance show the Charging Bull statue relocated from Bowling Green to the corner of Wall and Broad Streets. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced in April that the city intends to move the bull and the Fearless Girl statue to the vicinity of the New York Stock Exchange due to pedestrian safety issues at the statues’ current location. Rendering: WXY Architecture + Urban Design ing for an overhaul of the district’s street design. The committee’s report, commissioned by the Alliance for Downtown New York, was released May 14 after nine months of study. At the core of the report’s recommendations are measures intended to reorient the area’s streets around the pedestrian experience. Curbs would be removed under the plan and roadways would be uniformly resurfaced with a more durable and historically appropriate material, such as granite pavers, designed to “unify the area’s appearance and enhance a sense of place.” “These curbs contemplate vehicular traffic,” Farley said at a May 14 press
conference on Wall Street announcing the study’s results. “There will not be vehicular traffic in this area.” Cable lighting strung from building to building across the narrow, canyonlike thoroughfares would provide more consistent illumination and free up pedestrian space now occupied by streetlight posts. Interactive computerized entrance markers would help guide visitors through entrances to Wall Street that are now frequently cluttered. Truck delivery areas on Exchange Place and New Street would be reconfigured to expand loading space and reduce congestion.
PARKS For a few tumultuous weeks, New York Times photographers shot the city’s parks and people. The images have just seen the light of day BY RICHARD KHAVKINE
The parks were a sanctuary for his subjects. During the turbulent summer and fall of 1978, the city’s open spaces would be a revelation for D. Gorton. “The parks more than anything I went through illustrated how big Gotham was,” Gorton, a photojournalist with The New York Times from the early 1970s into the 1980s, said last week. “They gave you an insight into the length and breadth of the city,” he said. “When I got into the parks, I
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got an expansion of the mind.” Idled by a pressmen’s strike in August of that year, Gorton and seven of his Times colleagues were hired, by an initially wary Parks Commissioner Gordon Davis, to record life in the city’s parks. The eight photographers — Gorton, Neal Boenzi and the paper’s first female shooter, Joyce Dopkeen, among them — together made 2,924 images on sharp, expansive Kodachrome and Ektachrome. “We’re talking hardcore,” Gorton said of the film. “And we knew how to hold
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FOR HIM, SETTLING SMALL CLAIMS IS A BIG DEAL presided over Arbitration Man has three decades. for informal hearings about it He’s now blogging BY RICHARD KHAVKINE
is the common Arbitration Man their jurist. least folks’ hero. Or at Man has For 30 years, Arbitration court office of the civil few sat in a satellite Centre St. every building at 111 New Yorkers’ weeks and absorbed dry cleaning, burned lost accountings of fender benders, lousy paint jobs, and the like. And security deposits then he’s decided. Arbitration Man, About a year ago, so to not afwho requested anonymity started docuhe fect future proceedings, two dozen of what menting about compelling cases considers his most blog. in an eponymous about it because “I decided to write the stories but in a I was interested about it not from wanted to write from view but rather lawyer’s point of said Arbitration view,” of a lay point lawyer since 1961. Man, a practicing what’s at issue He first writes about post, renders and then, in a separatehow he arrived his decision, detailing blog the to Visitors at his conclusion. their opinions. often weigh in with get a rap going. I to “I really want whether they unreally want to know and why I did it,” I did derstood what don’t know how to he said. “Most people ... I’d like my cases the judge thinks. and also my trereflect my personalitythe law.” for mendous respect 80, went into indiMan, Arbitration suc in 1985, settling vidual practice
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MANHATTAN'S APARTMENT BOOM, > PROPERTY, P.20
2015
In Brief MORE HELP FOR SMALL BUSINESS
The effort to help small seems to businesses in the city be gathering steam. Two city councilmembers, Robert Margaret Chin and Cornegy, have introduced create legislation that wouldSmall a new “Office of the within Business Advocate” of Small the city’s Department Business Services. Chin The new post, which have up told us she’d like to would and running this year, for serve as an ombudsman city small businesses within them clear government, helping to get through the bureaucracy things done. Perhaps even more also importantly, the ombudsman and number will tally the type small business of complaints by taken in owners, the actions policy response, and somefor ways to recommendations If done well, begin to fix things. report would the ombudsman’s give us the first quantitative with taste of what’s wrong the city, an small businesses in towards important first step fixing the problem. of for deTo really make a difference, is a mere formality will have to the work process looking to complete their advocate are the chances course, velopers precinct, but rising rents, -- thanks to a find a way to tackle business’ is being done legally of after-hours projects quickly. their own hours,” which remain many While Chin “They pick out boom in the number throughout who lives on most vexing problem. said Mildred Angelo,of the Ruppert construction permits gauge what Buildings one said it’s too early tocould have the 19th floor in The Department of the city. number three years, the Houses on 92nd Street between role the advocate She Over the past on the is handing out a record work perThird avenues. permits, there, more information of Second and an ongoing all-hours number of after-hours bad thing. of after-hours work the city’s Dept. problem can’t be a said there’s with the mits granted by nearby where according to new data jumped 30 percent, This step, combinedBorough construction project noise Buildings has data provided in workers constantly make efforts by Manhattan to mediate BY DANIEL FITZSIMMONS according to DOB of Informacement from trucks. President Gale Brewer offer response to a Freedom classifies transferring they want. They knows the the rent renewal process, request. The city They 6 “They do whatever signs Every New Yorker clang, tion Act go as they please. work between some early, tangible small any construction on the weekend, can come and sound: the metal-on-metal or the piercing of progress. For many have no respect.” p.m. and 7 a.m., can’t come of these that the hollow boom, issuance reverse. owners, in business moving The increased beeps of a truck has generto a correspond and you as after-hours. soon enough. variances has led at the alarm clock The surge in permits
SLEEPS, THANKS TO THE CITY THAT NEVER UCTION A BOOM IN LATE-NIGHT CONSTR NEWS
A glance it: it’s the middle can hardly believe yet construction of the night, and carries on full-tilt. your local police or You can call 311
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