The local paper for the Upper East Side • SPECIAL REPORT •
WEEK OF JANUARY
Healthy
MANHATTAN ◄ P.11
18-24 2018
MUSIC SCHOOL MIGRATES SOUTH EXCLUSIVE After 93 years in Turtle Bay, big change is afoot as institution hires a new executive director and prepares to sell its building, purchase a new space and launch an early-childhood school BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
A 2,400-year-old marble bull’s head and other artifacts stolen from a Lebanese archaeological site were recovered by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and repatriated to the Lebanese government in December. Photo: Manhattan District Attorney’s Office
RECOVERING STOLEN HISTORY LAW ENFORCEMENT Local prosecutors step up efforts to slow illicit antiquities trade BY MICHAEL GAROFALO
When one thinks of hotbeds of criminal activity in Manhattan, the tony stretches of the Upper East Side are not the locale that immediately comes to mind. But in recent years, the high-end storefronts, venerable museums and
multimillion-dollar homes of the city’s Silk Stocking District have become the frontlines of a law enforcement crackdown that has prompted coordination between local, federal and international agencies, and, last month, the formation of a specialized unit within the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. The target of these efforts? Illegal trafficking — not of humans or drugs or stolen consumer goods, but of looted antiquities.
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The Turtle Bay Music School was founded in 1925 and has been offering high-quality music education to all ages, skill sets and incomes levels at its current home at 244 East 52nd Street off Second Avenue since 1935. Now, the community music school is finalizing plans to pull up stakes and move into another community: It will soon be making music and minting musicians 14 blocks to the south, Straus News has learned. TBMS has historically embraced what it calls the “transformative power of music” and its “integral role in daily life.” But rarely in its 93 years as a non-profit has the school itself faced such a dramatic transformation. Among the changes on tap, according to real estate sources, neighbors and a recruitment document posted online by the school’s executive search firm: • TBMS is in the process of selling its three-story, double townhouse, an 1865 building with a beige-stone base, red-brick top and Romanesque arches that originally housed the GermanAmerican School Society. • The school is also in the “final stages” of buying a new home near East 38th Street and First Avenue. It will then execute renovation plans “with a goal of occupying the new space by fall 2018 with limited downtime.” • Once the school’s relocation has taken place, it will launch a “musiccentric pre-school” for up to 64 chil-
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dren. The early-childhood initiative will provide a major new revenue stream for TBMS, which has a nineperson staff and $2 million-plus budget, and “create a feeder” for the school’s programs. • Meanwhile, British-born soprano and arts administrator Lorna Jane Norris, vice president of education at the South Shore Conservatory near Boston, was tapped as executive director of TBMS on January 12th.
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The longtime home of The Turtle Bay Music School at 244 East 52nd Street. The community music school plans to move later this year to a new space at 38th Street and First Avenue. Photo: Douglas Feiden Jewish women and girls light up the world by lighting the Shabbat candles every Friday evening 18 minutes before sunset. Friday, January 19 – 4:40 pm. For more information visit www.chabaduppereastside.com
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