Fireworks: not a pain in the ear to her
To the Editor:
While I sympathize with the residents whose lives are disturbed by fireworks, (“Fireworks Set Off Sparks of Anger in BPC,” Sept. Trib), I can’t help but be jealous. I would give anything to be able to see a show like those described in your article every single night of my life. Each time I hear that familiar boom in my apartment, I grab my son and race to the roof, hoping to catch just a glimpse.
And every time I wonder how to find out about the shows in advance, so we could get to the river and see the entire spectacle. So, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, could you please forward info to me on how to get on the mailing list that will “warn” me when my life might be so happily disturbed?
Fraya Berg
Editor’s note: To be put on the Fireworks Alert list, e-mail your request to Community Board 1 at nyccb1@aol.com.
A city devoured by the highest bidder
To the Editor:
I just read the article about the 76-story tower that Forest City Ratner is building in the New York Downtown Hospital parking lot.
As a resident of 140 Nassau Street I am very concerned about how this will change our lives, yes, but also I am mystified how it can be legal. As I understand it, in the 1960s, under the Model Cities program, the city of New York gave this land to the hospital. Again, as I understand it, the land could only be developed for community use. How could 650 high-end apartments (they are to be the highest end at $2,000 a square foot) qualify? No article has ever covered this aspect of the proposed development.
It is so upsetting to see our beloved city being devoured by the highest bidders.
Tina Schiller
Move Mayor's office, then reopen park
To the Editor:
Skip Blumberg’s heart is in the right place but we don’t need to build a new City Hall to re-open City Hall Park. (See Letters, Sept. Trib.) A terrorist with a backpack bomb could not seriously damage City Hall unless he was in it, so the park and the closed-off street in front of City Hall could be re-opened to pedestrian traffic without any loss of security.
That street was not closed because of terrorism—it was already closed off back in the 1960s (in Mayor John Lindsay’s time) to make a parking lot for the cars of city bigwigs. I remember writing nasty letters to the editor back then because they were even parking their cars on the pedestrian walkways next to City Hall.
But turning the present landmark structure into a museum is a great idea, and you don’t need to build a new City Hall for that either. Why do we need a special “City Hall” structure? Simply move the mayor’s office and all the other offices and “functions” of the present City Hall into the aptly named Municipal Building.
And while we’re at it, we should sell Gracie Mansion to a real estate developer. No mayor of a city needs a mansion, New York doesn’t need amateur royalty, and we would gain millions in additional tax revenue.
Jefferson Chase
A sign disappears
To the Editor:
The sign below, on the southeast corner of Chambers Street and West Broadway, will soon be disappearing behind, it is rumored, a new hotel. When it is gone it will no longer serve to remind those of us who have lived in the neighborhood for most of our adult lives of some establishments that once made this area such a vibrant, if ungentrified, place.
I bought many a bluefish at Petrosino’s, and Auslander’s was an old-fashioned hardware store, a nuts-and-bolts oasis with a rolling wooden ladder along the walls. Maxim was only one of the dozens of shops that made this area a center for electronics. Captain Mike’s served seafood—though my dining out was very limited in those days and I never sampled its fare. (Missing, alas, from the sign is Cheese of All Nations, a few steps west on Chambers, an extraordinary shop with its solid banks of cheeses on all sides and the clerks looking down from high platforms behind them.)
Too bad all these places are gone, and too bad the sign mentioning them will soon be gone too.
John Willenbecher
An unwelcome advertising blitz in Tribeca
To the Editor:
Tribeca is transforming before our eyes, and the new construction and scaffolding has brought an unpleasant addition to our neighborhood: a blitz of advertising. Building sites are now screaming products from every square inch of available scaffolding space.
The worst offender is the oversized billboard erected a few weeks ago at Varick and Franklin Streets, encouraging us all to engage in online sports gambling. This billboard is better suited for the Verrazano Bridge than a sidewalk bridge; was it really necessary to make the letters six feet high? And speaking of size, the billboard is bookended by gigantic pinup photos of Nikki Cox, seen from several blocks away.
Are there no zoning rules to guide this gargantuan advertising, which completely overwhelms lovely Finn Square? I also take issue with buildings that rent out their scaffolding space to any advertiser willing to pay, regardless of appropriateness.
If the city can regulate the size and placement of the signs for our local businesses, why can’t they do something about the temporary assault of these oversized advertising campaigns?
Nelle Fortenberry
First African-American church was not Sojourner's
To the Editor:
The Tribeca Trib does the most fascinating articles about Downtown’s history. One of the joys of living Downtown is seeing the area in New York’s history.
So thanks for September’s rare article, “Sojourner’s Church: The Nation’s First African-American Church in Tribeca.” This story of one of Tribeca’s colonial residents, Sojourner Truth, the abolitionist born into slavery, shows the varied ancestors who have occupied New York’s neighborhoods.
But I would like to make one correction to Oliver E. Allen’s thoughtful article: Tribeca’s 1796 African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church was one of the first, but not “the first independent black church in this country.”
The First African Baptist Church of Savannah, Ga., was established in 1788 by Rev. George Leile, a slave born in Virginia, who was ordained in 1773. A building was erected in 1794 by Andrew Bryan and others ordained by Rev. Leile. When Rev. Leile’s owner’s family tried to re-enslave him, after he was freed fighting alongside his owner in the American Revolutionary War, this freed person escaped to the tropical mountains of Jamaica in the Caribbean, where he ministered to Africans, including my ancestors, in outdoor services. So maybe the key word in Oliver Allen’s article is ”independent,” not “first.”
Pearl Duncan
