The local paper for Downtown wn
OTDOWNTOWN.COM
MARCH - APRIL
26-1 2015
A MANHATTAN TRIO TAKES BROADWAY Q&A, P.14
In Brief
DELL WILLIAMS, FOUNDER OF EVE’S GARDEN SEX BOUTIQUE, DIES
LIBRARIES IN NEED OF $1 BILLION IN FIXES
Multi-faceted feminist and activist started Eve’s Garden from her apartment’s kitchen BY MARY REINHOLZ
Friends of Dell Williams, the founder of the country’s first woman-owned and -run sex boutique, are remembering the petite former WAC, Hollywood actress and Fifth Avenue advertising executive as a tireless advocate for the liberation of the female libido practically up to the time she died March 11 at her Manhattan apartment. She was 92. “Dell Williams’ awareness (of) the ignorance women had about their own sexuality and her role in educating them revealed a whole new dimension to feminism and brought spice to the movement,” Jacqui Ceballos, the former president of the National Organization for Women’s New York chapter, wrote in an email from Phoenix. In 1974, during the height of secondwave feminism in New York and about a year after she organized the NOW chapter’s first sexuality conference for women, Williams sowed the seeds of Eve’s Garden, in the kitchen of her 12th floor apartment on West 57th Street, as a mail-order business. The initial catalogue had three items: the Hitachi Magic Wand — ostensibly a massage tool — the Prelude 3 vibrator and the erotic artist Betty Dodson’s book “Liberating Masturbation.” Before long, “the orders poured in and started to overflow onto my stove and countertops,” she wrote in her 2005 memoir, “Revolution in the Garden.” About a year later, she would open the retail operation, nearly next door to her apartment. An elegant destination on the opposite side of the
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A rendering of the construction project.
MORE DETAILS ON DISPUTED TWO BRIDGES PROJECT NEWS Renderings flesh out 71-story luxury towers BY PANYIN CONDUAH
Newly released details about a proposed luxury development on the east side of lower Manhattan are emboldening neighbors, who have raised concerns about noise and other disruptions from the massive construction project. Extell Development, which is building at 250 South Street, released renderings of the two 71-story luxury towers in the shadow of the working-class Two Bridges
neighborhood on the East River. Two Bridges tenant association president Trever Holland said the renderings weren’t present on the construction fence for a while. “We had to force them to get that rendering, we had to file a report with the Department of Buildings (D.O.B.) because by law all construction projects are required to have renderings on their fence,” he said. The drawings show that the Extell tower is 800 feet tall — almost two and half times taller than the Manhattan Bridge it will overlook. Holland said that unlike other developers, who present slides of their plans along with pictures to show their goals for their projects, Extell has
not been too forthcoming about the plans for 250 South Street.“Extell has been very coy with everything they do,” said Holland. That coyness, he said, has made it difficult for residents in the neighborhood to keep up with what to expect from the new addition to the area. Two Bridge residents, along with Community Board 3 District Manager Susan Scheer, met with an Extell development panel in late February to address construction updates and concerns. At that meeting, many people voiced their dissatisfaction with weekend construction, the developing cracks in
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The state of the city’s 207 public libraries is dismal. Broken heating and air conditioning systems. Leaking roofs. Book stacks in disrepair. The situation has become so untenable that the presidents of the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens library systems took the unusual step of holding a news conference outside City Hall to highlight what they call a “maintenance crisis” in the libraries and to beg City Hall for cash. Their appeal was accompanied by a report estimating that it will take $1 billion to fix the problem - this at a time when the private sector in the city is booming, and more glamorous arts institutions are brimming with cash. Not so our local libraries. Last year, the Center for an Urban Future found that libraries for years have been starved for cash, causing the maintenance crisis the city now faces. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg repeatedly cut library budgets, leading to decreased staffing and facilities spending. “Despite public libraries’ ever more important role in keeping neighborhoods strong, city funding for libraries has not kept up, particularly for capital needs,” the report reads. Last year, Mayor Bill de Blasio kept library spending flat, which is a sort of progress, given recent cutbacks. As for next year, according to The Wall Street Journal, the mayor’s Office of Management and Budget’s capital plan includes $566.1 million for libraries, including an increase in library capital funding for fiscal 2015 to $229 million from $205 million. de Blasio also has increased annual operating funds for the city’s three public library systems by $22 million to $323 million. It’s not $1 billion. But it could be the beginning, finally, of reversing years of neglect.