Tribeca Trib Covering Lower Manhattan: September 2007

A Cleaner, Quieter Building is Promised for 60 Hudson Representatives of the telecommunications hub 60 Hudson Street say they are making progress in their efforts to reduce the noise and diesel emissions that neighbors have been battling for more than a decade.

Remembering 9/11 With Songs, Silence and a Field of Flags On this sixth anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, there will be many ways for Downtown residents and workers to remember and reflect on that day. Here are some activities planned for Lower Manhattan.

Local Arts Groups Score Funding Bonanza Jonathon Hollander was nervous as he opened his mailbox one Saturday last month. For weeks he had been anticipating the envelope from the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs that would tell him how much funding his Battery Dance Company would receive in the coming year.

Allures of Nature and Art in Battery City's Parks
With a 32-acre garden teeming with 400 species of flowers, shrubs and trees and a river with more than 30 species of fish, Battery Park City’s parks beckons to be enjoyed. Here is a sampling of some activities sponsored by the BPC Parks Conservancy. All are free but some require registration (212-267-9700). For more activities, go to www.bpcparks.org.

Greenmarket's 'Bread Guy' Says So Long
For some people, it’s a shrink or hair stylist who helps them navigate life’s twists and turns. But for many devotees of Greenwich Street’s Greenmarket, it was Allan Cohen, better known as “the bread guy.” For 13 years, he was there at his stand outside Washington Market Park in Tribeca, offering up morsels of wisdom and a ready ear right along with the challah, onion rolls and rye.

Bull! Frozen in mid-lunge, the massive, larger-than-life bull that dominates the intersection of Broadway and Whitehall Street doesn’t look like it wants to make friends or entertain visitors.

Movie Series Shatters Image of the Disabled Walking, wheeling, limping, a variously abled audience enters the darkened screening room on Lafayette Street each month to see a movie with a difference.

City Cites Building for Missing Facade You wouldn't know it as you walk by 46 Laight Street, but the five-story former tenement, which faces the Holland Tunnel rotary, is missing an important structural feature: Its entire rear facade.

Anger in Aftermath of Building Blaze Looking out the window of her 11th-floor apartment, Mary Dierickx is face to face with the black-shrouded hulk of the former Deutsche Bank building. Its burned-out windows gape at her. Its smoke-singed scaffolding planks clatter in the breeze.

Community Questions Officials Over Fire Nearly six years after the World Trade Center attacks, a burning skyscraper once again poured plumes of potentially toxic smoke into the air of Lower Manhattan. Once again, firefighters lost their lives fighting the blaze. And once again, neighborhood residents complained that they lacked answers to questions critical to their health and safety.

History Relived Just half a mile from the bustle of Lower Manhattan, the stately homes, tree-lined paths and 19th-century fortifications of Governors Island make it easy for visitors to imagine that they have stepped back into another era. One weekend last month, dozens of men donned the Union blue and Confederate gray to complete the illusion and bring the island’s Civil War history to life.

Take a Voyage to the Depths of the Hudson, and Stay Dry There are river views and then there are river views, the kinds that can be captured only with the aid of scuba gear and underwater camera. On Saturday, Sept. 15, the River Project presents “Live! From the Bottom of New York Harbor,” a real-time, real-life look at what is churning down deep in the Hudson.

Kids Garden to Grow in Washington Market Park Child-size garden plots, a bubbling fountain, a tiny stage, even a butterfly garden are in the Parks Department’s preliminary plans for a kid’s garden in Tribeca’s Washington Market Park.

Documentary Photography Finds New Home in Tribeca “I feel like I have to remind myself that this is my gallery, that I’m not, like, hanging out at a friend’s space,” Sasha Wolf said the other day as she was getting ready for the Sept. 20 opening of what is, indeed, her own ground-floor space at 10 Leonard St., the Sasha Wolf Gallery.

Police Beat

Pond Keeper Early each weekday morning, a man wearing hip waders and wielding a fishnet can be seen sloshing through the lily pond at the end of Vesey Street in Battery Park City. Accompanied by the soothing white noise of the pond’s waterfall, he methodically weaves through the submerged planters, plucking a dead leaf here, skimming the surface for debris there.

Predator! True Story of a False Rumor
There was no child, no lure and no creep, as the New York Post had blithely declared. But fear did reign among hundreds of Downtown parents during the summer when false rumors of an attempted child abduction in Washington Market Park spread at wildfire speed. In the days that followed, local news crews descended on the park, police patrolled the playground, the community board sought action and City Councilman Alan Gerson was poised to hold a hearing on the dangers that seemed to lurk in Tribeca’s most popular play space.

Community Briefs

Coming to a Screen Near You: Giant Festival of Little Movies It is decidely different sort of film festival that comes to Lower Manhattan this month.

Folding the Umbrella
xxxThere were few kind words for the 16-foot-high, 5,300-pound Travelers Insurance umbrella when it went up in front of the company’s headquarters 10 years ago (now the Citigroup building) at 388 Greenwich St. in Tribeca. One Community Board 1 member jokingly referred to the public space where it would reside as “Mary Poppins Plaza.” And employees in the building mocked it the most. “I’d like to see some nice wind come by and take it for a ride,” said one.