Paulette Crowther, 53, was longtime Tribecan

To the Editor:
Paulette Isabel Crowther was among the settlers who helped transform Tribeca into a creative haven in the 1980s. A public relations director and landscape designer who lived in Tribeca for nearly two decades, many locals knew Paulette by her strawberry-blond curls, jaunty gait and infectious grin. Paulette died from anal cancer earlier this year at age 53.

Paulette was a bright light of Tribeca, devoted to gardening in Washington Market Park, graphic design and raising her family. An avid gardener, Paulette invested her landscape talent to help make Tribeca beautiful. Her flowerbed at Washington Market Park was filled with roses, peonies and day lilies.

She went into labor with her firstborn at Two Eleven, a popular restaurant in the 1980s on the corner of Franklin Street and West Broadway that was one of her regular dining spots in addition to Walker’s, Bubby’s and the Odeon. As her children grew, she became an active parent at the Washington Market pre-school and P.S. 234, where she sent all three of her children, Justine, Tristan and Camille, now 26, 25 and 23.

Paulette was a regular at the local food stores. She loved to shop for the gourmet dinner parties she and her ex-husband, Carlos Almada, hosted for painters, writers, filmmakers, and other artists and bon vivants at their home on N. Moore Street. The couple’s house was decorated with works from up-and-coming artists, as well as pieces that Paulette designed in the early 1980s when she worked as a graphic designer with such companies as Joseph Papp’s Public Theater.

Paulette was diagnosed with stage IV anal cancer in March 2008, but that did not stop her from pursuing her lifelong passion for gardening. In the fall of 2009, she enrolled in the masters of science program in landscape design at Columbia and immersed herself in her projects while she underwent debilitating cancer treatments and worked full time.  During this time, she continued the career she had carved out as the associate director of public relations at Cardozo Law School and at the YWCA.

After two years of chemotherapy and radiation, Paulette died at home in April in the arms of her loved ones.

Throughout the process, she and her children were frustrated with the lack of therapeutic options for patients with anal cancer and the stigma associated with the disease. To help future families, her children are establishing The Foundation for HPV and Anal Cancer, which will raise awareness about the disease, provide support and information to patients and their families, and fund research to increase the understanding of human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated cancers, as well as advance treatments to sustain life for those who are battling them.

While HPV is best known for its links to cervical cancer, it can also cause vulvar, vaginal, penile, head and neck, and anal cancer. Over 5,000 people in the U.S. will learn that they have anal cancer in 2010. Unfortunately, there is an increased incidence of this type of cancer and the number of deaths are growing every year.

The website for the foundation is  analcancerfoundation.org. The family can also be emailed at analcancerfoundation@gmail.com.

Justine Almada, Tristan Almada and Camille Almada

Reconsidering the architectural value of Park Place buildings

To the Editor
Doubtless the proposed new Muslim Center, if built, will require the demolition of the two buildings now at 45-51 Park Place. It may seem like a small matter in the larger issues swirling around the project, but what will become of the five magnificent cast iron Corinthian columns which adorn the facade of No. 51? They are unusual in being exceptionally tall and disengaged (completely in the round) and the elements of their capitals, unlike so many in the neighborhood, which have been stripped away over the years, are almost entirely intact.

Will these beautiful cast iron objects simply be discarded, even sold for scrap? The Landmarks Commission has deemed them unworthy of saving but their loss would be a real blow to a neighborhood (and a city) famous for its cast iron architecture. Might it be too much to hope that an enlightened developer and architect find a way to save them by incorporating them into the design of the new building?

John Willenbecher
Former member of the Public Design Commission of the City of New York.

To the Editor:
The very relevant detail of historic significance has been lost amid the political maelstrom surrounding 45 Park Place. While the Landmarks Commission now believes it does not merit individual designation, 21 years ago the same Landmarks Commission proposed the elegant cast-iron structure for designation as an individual landmark.

In September 1989, a public hearing held by the commission elicited public testimony overwhelmingly in favor of the commission’s proposal, with Community Board One voting nearly unanimously to support the designation. Yet until their recent vote, the commission failed to act on their own proposal, leaving the structure as one of many “heard but not designated” structures languishing in limbo. 

The unprofessional practice of holding public hearings but failing to vote on a designation must end. Such inaction fails to protect historic resources the commission is charged with overseeing while subjecting it to the political manipulation so clearly evident now.

Hal Bromm

Trib garners national awards for breaking news, photos, commentary

The Trib’s news reporting, commentary and photography received first-place honors in the National Newspaper Association’s annual Better Newspaper Contest.

Matt Dunning’s piece on the violence and other neighborhood mayhem caused by the patrons of Deco, a club on Leonard Street, was judged the best breaking news story for 2009. “…[T]he writer drew me into what was happening. The article showed strong writing and strong reporting. Excellent work,” the judges wrote.

In the photo essay category, Carl Glassman took first and second place, winning for his photos of the Downtown Giants’ youngest players learning to play football and for pictures of the city’s new civil wedding center on Worth Street.

Jim Stratton’s opinion piece on the health dangers of hydrofracking, a method used in natural gas drilling, was a first-place “serious column” winner. “The scholarship is extensive, the rhetoric persuasive, the reasoning sensible, the sarcasm therapeutic,” the judges wrote. “This is the essence of journalism, what wheat is to bread.”

Glassman’s article on the Downtown Giants was a second-place feature story winner and Peter Field Peck’s photo of a church service in the now-former Deco club space took second place in the category of feature photo.

The Trib also received honorable mentions for its local news coverage, overall use of photographs and arts reviewing.