The Broadsheet - Lower Manhattan’s Local Newspaper

Community Board 1 (CB1) is urging City administrators to embark on a reprise of the Bloomberg Era MillionTreesNYC Initiative, which planted one million new trees throughout the five boroughs, with an eye toward boosting the tally of saplings in Lower Manhattan.

Last month, the City’s Parks Department launched a revised and enhanced version of its online map of all trees in public spaces, which offers details about specific trees, as well as a comprehensive inventory of the benefits they offer.

In a resolution enacted at its November meeting, CB1 calls for “a second Million Trees Initiative that is more focused on street trees and maintenance over the reforesting of parklands.” The same measure notes that Lower Manhattan benefitted from the MillionTreesNYC Initiative, “with a Nature Conservancy study documenting the 2005 tree count and the 2015 tree count moving from 1,562 trees to 2,297 trees respectively.”

The Nature Conservancy study also indicates that the 2015 numbers reflect only half of CB1’s tree-hosting potential, and that a more ambitious program would improve the urban forest canopy of Lower Manhattan. One way this might be accomplished, CB1 notes, is by transforming the perimeters of the community’s many security zones (currently surrounded by stone barricades and metal bollards) with “a more human-friendly aesthetic that involves the use of planters and greenery.”

Shortly after CB1 enacted this resolution, the Parks Department launched a souped-up version of its New York City Tree Map. This interactive atlas documents a total of 1,756 trees in Lower Manhattan. (The divergence from the total compiled by the Nature Conservancy and cited by CB1 is explained by the use of slightly different borders to demarcate Lower Manhattan, as well as the City’s analysis excluding many hundreds of trees along Battery Park City’s esplanade and on Governors Island, both of which are overseen by agencies independent of the Parks Department.)

The enhanced version of the New York City Tree Map catalogs a litany of benefits from the local canopy, estimating that Downtown trees intercept 1.7 million gallons of storm water each year, while conserving 1.3 million kilowatt hours of energy usage, and removing more than one million tons of carbon dioxide (along with more than 2,300 pounds of other pollutants) from the air.

A local case in point will illustrate the accretive power of trees as part of Lower Manhattan’s streetscape. A single London planetree growing in front of the Museum of Jewish Heritage is estimated each year to absorb 2,668 gallons of stormwater, save 1,670 kilowatt hours of electricity, and sequester 2,104 tons of carbon dioxide, along with three pounds of other pollutants.

The City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development is accepting applications for its waiting list to lease apartments (including studios, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom units) in the Exhibit, a luxury rental building at 60 Fulton Street, which have been set aside at less-than–market rents for low- and moderate-income tenants. Read more...

To the editor,

[Re: Prescription: A Dose of Loss, December 21, 2022]

The retail situation along South End Avenue is pretty sad, but not a surprise given there is no overall retail strategy for the community. Had hoped to see the street level space on the east side of South End Avenue, part of Brookfield Place, occupied and backfill some of what’s been lost. Not looking like that will happen.

While not the responsibility of the [Battery Park City] Authority, they are in a position to work with retail property owners and the community to develop a plan as to what the community needs and how to advance the plan to make that so. Getting an assist from the leadership at Brookfield Place and Westfield may be helpful and guide the process. Doing so may require the rework of some space—some grow, some shrink—in any event, the process of random leasing without a strategy or plan means we just get more of the same.

To the editor,

Monday, January 2nd, a legal holiday. A beautiful unseasonably warm afternoon, 54˚. A perfect day to enjoy sitting at the East River near Pier 11. But as I exited the elevator, nauseating helicopter fumes filled the lobby of my building.

I covered my mouth and nose and headed toward the water. I saw four helicopters in the air, three at the Pier 6 heliport preparing for their next tour, all unloading volumes of nauseating polluting fuel. For entertainment!

These helicopters are not in operation for any vital purpose, by any stretch of rationalization. The constant droning noise is audible in my home, two blocks away, but very loud at the water’s edge. I see another woman covering her mouth and nose with her scarf, a grimace on her face as she stares at the noisy helicopters in the air. Killing us softly with their fumes.

While Lower Manhattan is underway with building a resilient coastline for the city, these noisy polluting unnecessary machines are adding to our climate problem. Tourist trade at the expense of everyone! Especially at the expense of the residents in the area.

This is not a good sign for the New Year.

This is a rendering of what the night sky above New York City will look like around 7pm on January 4, 2023. See the moon above the east-southeast horizon, and reddish Mars higher to the right. Sweep to the right, southwest, and find glowing Jupiter. Identify the constellation Orion, the hunter, by the three stars of his belt. www.timeanddate.com

The Winter Solstice ushered in the rhythmic rising of winter stars and star patterns at sunset, to travel the sky all night and set before sunrise. Early in human history, astronomers identified points of light that move among the “fixed stars”: the Greeks named them planētēs, meaning “wanderer.” This month, four naked-eye planets shine with the season’s winsome stars and constellations.

Around 7pm tonight, the waxing gibbous moon is high above the east-southeast horizon. To the upper right of the moon, looking like a glowing reddish star, find planet Mars, -1.43 magnitude. Sweep to the right, southwest, to find brilliant planet Jupiter, -2.38m. Continue toward the southwest skyline where dimmer, yellowish planet Saturn, .82m.

Just entering the evening sky in the west, planet Venus, brightest of all at -3.91m, sets in the south-southwest at 6:27pm on the 13th. Orion the Hunter climbs above the eastern horizon at nightfall. Orion’s shoulder star, reddish Betelgeuse, 0.69 magnitude, and brighter foot star, bluish Rigel, 0.15m, mark the span of the prone giant. Find Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, -1.47m, by following Orion’s belt stars to the left.

The Full Wolf Moon rises in the northeast on the 6th at 4:17pm and sets in the west-northwest the morning of the 7th at 8:12am.

Four winsome winter stars Sirius, Rigel, Betelgeuse, Aldebaran. Four celestial wanderers Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus. And a waxing, full, then waning moon in the sky.

Dr. Jennifer Berg, a veterinarian beloved by downtowners and their pets, passed away on November 10, 2022. She was 49. She is survived by her husband Lionel, son Tristan and daughter Juliette, parents Alice and Robert Berg, brother Christopher (Melanie) and nephews Zachary and Nathan, aunts, an uncle, cousins and many friends in Milwaukee and New York.

Dr. Berg graduated from the University of Wisconsin Veterinary School and became an Associate Veterinarian at the Tribeca Soho Animal Hospital in 1998. With her husband Lionel Closson, she founded Tribeca Veterinary Wellness (TVW), at 256 West Street, six years ago.

According to her biography at the TVW website, she spent her formative years in Milwaukee, often training and dressing up the family dog. Summers were spent on a dairy farm in northern Wisconsin, mostly in the barn, bottle feeding calves and trying to befriend and treat the barn cats.

To the people in Lower Manhattan who knew her, she was kind and generous, connecting with each creature that came through TVW's doors, whether she sat on the floor to soothe an anxious dog or calmed a worried human by answering questions with the utmost patience. Tribeca Veterinary Wellness was the realization of her dream—to create her own veterinary clinic with her own philosophy and positive culture at its core. Her husband Lionel is committed to keeping the clinic’s doors open. “It was our family project,” he said.

Directed by Church Street School of Music, the chorus is open to all who love to sing. Learn contemporary and classic songs and perform at community events throughout the year.

Agenda

Agenda

Greenwich Street & Chambers Street

Saturdays, 8am-3pm (compost program: Saturdays, 8am-1pm)

Broadway & Whitehall St

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 8am-5pm (compost program: 8am-11am)

91 South Street, between Fulton & John Streets

Monday through Saturday,11:30am-5pm

Cornelius Vanderbilt died on this day in 1877. Born on Staten Island in 1794, he quit school at age 11 to work on his father's ferry in New York Harbor. At 16, he started his own ferry service. By the 1820s, he was a steamboat entrepreneur. Eventually, Vanderbilt dominated the local steamboat business and by 1840 began to take over management of the connecting railroads. This is a painting of the Hudson River steamer C. Vanderbilt, owned by Cornelius Vanderbilt, painted in 1847 by James and John Bard.

1853 – After having been kidnapped and sold into slavery in the American South, Solomon Northup regains his freedom; his memoir Twelve Years a Slave later becomes a national bestseller.

1865 – The New York Stock Exchange opens its first permanent headquarters near Wall Street in New York City.

1903 – Topsy, an elephant, is electrocuted by the owners of Luna Park, Coney Island. The Edison film company shoots the film Electrocuting an Elephant of Topsy's death.

1974 – President Richard Nixon refuses to hand over materials subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee.

1998 – A massive ice storm hits eastern Canada and the northeastern United States, continuing through January 10 and causing widespread destruction.

2000 - A day after accepting the head coaching position at the New York Jets, Bill Belichick resigns and moves to the New England Patriots

2004 – Spirit, a NASA Mars rover, lands successfully on Mars.

2022 - Canadian government announces $31.5 billion settlement to compensate for Indigenous child welfare system.

1643 – Isaac Newton, English mathematician and physicist (d. 1727)

1809 – Louis Braille, French educator, invented Braille (d. 1852)

1935 – Floyd Patterson, American boxer (d. 2006)

1960 - Michael Stipe, rock vocalist and songwriter

1877 – Cornelius Vanderbilt, American businessman and philanthropist (b. 1794)

1960 – Albert Camus, novelist, philosopher, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1913)

1965 – T. S. Eliot, poet, playwright, and critic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1888)

2012 – Eve Arnold, American photographer and journalist (b. 1912)