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Wagner Park in Battery Park City. July 31, 2014. (Photo: Terese Loeb Kreuzer)

The Lower West Side, said Joe Svehlak, a licensed New York City tour guide, was once the most diverse immigrant neighborhood in New York City. Where high-rise hotels and office buildings now proliferate, an estimated 10,000 people crowded into the narrow streets between Battery Park and the World Trade Center site, and between West Street, then bordering the Hudson River, and Broadway.

In the early 1900's, Svehlak's mother and her family were among them. They were Slavic, brought to this country by Svehlak's grandmother, who came first and then sent for her husband and four children. They joined a neighborhood made up Lebanese, Syrians, Armenians, Greeks and Turks and others displaced by the break-up of the Ottoman Empire. They had been preceded by Irish and Germans, who had settled in the neighborhood in the 1840s. There were 27 nationalities in all, within about one square mile.

"It was a great American story of integration," said Svehlak, "unique to the Lower West Side."

Svehlak poured out this story, both personal and historical, on a walking tour on July 27. It was organized by the Friends of the Lower West Side as part of its campaign to preserve the remnants of what was once known as "Little Syria" because so many Syrians had settled there. Svehlak said that it was "The mother colony of all Arabic settlements in the United States."

Not much is left, done in twice by the City's exercise of eminent domain.

In the 1940s, Robert Moses condemned many of the tenements on the lower parts of Greenwich and Washington Streets in order to build the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. At that time, some members of the community fled to Brooklyn. Others moved north, only to be displaced again around 20 years later by clearances for the World Trade Center. 

Svehlak constructed his account of this all-but-lost world mostly with photographs and ephemera such as the subway sign that says "South Ferry" - a reference to the time when a ferry connected Lower Manhattan with Brooklyn, where some members of the "South Ferry community" moved in the 1890s.

"In the 1940s, my mother walked me around the neighborhood," Svehlak, now 74 years old, recalled. "I returned to it from 1956 to 1958 to work as a messenger." Much of what he saw then has disappeared in his lifetime.

Svehlak's mother remembered that the Lower West Side once abounded in wonderful pastry and candy shops and shops selling silks, linens and embroidery. "A Syrian lady would come to my mother's house with a big tablecloth on her back full of things she was trying to sell," Svehlak recounted.

Like their neighbors, Svehlak's mother and her family lived in a tenement. "My uncle worked in a restaurant, " said Svehlak. "My grandmother scrubbed floors. But they were living quite comfortably here. They didn't want to leave. They were used to living in tight quarters. They had the Washington Market nearby and a park. They could walk to work. They felt safe."

Washington Street

Interspersed among the office buildings, there are a few tenements left, and on Washington Street, three neighboring buildings from the Lower West Side's immigrant heyday. A tenement at 109 Washington St. was once home to Svehlak's mother and her family. It is around 130 years old, and perhaps older, built in a restrained style with cast iron window frames and ornamental swags over the windows.

Next to it is a community house that opened in 1926 to serve the health, educational and social needs of the neighborhood. It was largely constructed with funds donated by William H. Childs, the founder of the Bon Ami household cleanser company. It contained the first public library in downtown Manhattan plus clinics, a milk dispensary, an assembly hall, a cooking school, a gymnasium and a nursery.

For several years, it has been empty with a sign in front that says that it's for lease. At one point, it was slated for demolition.

Next to that is the former St. George's Melkite Church, now a restaurant. "Ninety percent of the Arabs in this community were Christian," Svehlak remarked.

The former church is the only one of the three Washington Street buildings that is landmarked, although the Friends of the Lower West Side have tried repeatedly to have the other two buildings landmarked as well.

"Where else in New York do you have three buildings that represent three different aspects of a neighborhood existing side by side?" Svehlak asked.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission claims that the buildings are not architecturally significant but the Friends of the Lower West Side have not given up. Neither did their ancestors, who came to New York with little or nothing and made it their home.

For more information about "Little Syria" and about the efforts to preserve the Washington Street buildings, click here.

A corner of "Little Syria." The house at 94 Greenwich St. (at Rector Street) dates from 1799 and is landmarked. When this house was built, this was one of the most prestigious places in New York City in which to live. When the wealthy moved uptown, the immigrants moved in.

"Russian hackers amass over a billion Internet passwords" said an article in The New York Times on Aug. 5. Following this reported online security breach, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman offered tips to consumers for safeguarding sensitive personal information online.

This latest breach, perhaps the largest ever of its kind, targeted websites of both large and small companies as well as individuals. It is believed that individuals suspected of being responsible for such breaches sell stolen data to third parties on the black market and use the information to send spam advertisements to consumers.

To read the Attorney General's advice on what to do if you have been a victim of identity theft and how to avoid identity theft, click here.

Battery Park City Authority's geothermal wells send dollars down the drain: The Battery Park City Parks Conservancy's headquarters building at 75 Battery Place, completed in 2010, was supposed to be heated and cooled by geothermal wells. Unfortunately, they didn't work. On July 31, the BPCA board of directors approved an expenditure of $2.956 million to Tomco Mechanical Corp. to try to fix the problem by creating a different kind of heating and cooling system.

BPCA chairman Dennis Mehiel was not pleased. He wanted to know how much had been spent on the original wells. Gwen Dawson, senior vice president of asset management, who handles construction projects, said "the net financial impact" was between $3 and $4 million, paid to Crescent Contracting. Actually, by the time change orders had been approved in an attempt to fix the non-functioning wells, it turns out that the BPCA had paid Crescent Contracting $5.174 million.

At the time of the board meeting, thinking that the BPCA was out around $3 million, Mehiel wanted to know how this had happened. "The decision was made" to skip drilling a test well, Dawson said.

"The decision was made by whom?" Mehiel persisted.

Dawson said that "due to developer time exigencies and sequencing challenges," a test well was not drilled. Following the completion of the base building and the subsequent drilling of the two system wells, modifications and enhancements were attempted in an effort to allow the system to operate within the required parameters - but without success.

Mehiel wondered whether legal steps could be taken to recover some of the money that went down the drain. Dawson said that the BPCA's legal department had recommended against a lawsuit because of the cost of litigation.

Since the Battery Park City Parks Conservancy needs an adequate heating and cooling system,  there was no alternative for the BPCA board but to approve the expenditure of almost $3 million that hopefully will provide it.

As a footnote to this episode, AKF Engineering was sub-consultant to the project architect for the geothermal wells and was also one of two mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering firms hired to work on Pier A, now nearing completion as a restaurant and visitor center at the southern end of Battery Park City. - Terese Loeb Kreuzer

Construction meal deals: P.J. Clarke's, with a prime location facing North Cove Marina on the Battery Park City waterfront, claims that its landlord, Brookfield Office Properties, is trying to force the restaurant out in order to install a ritzier, more lucrative tenant. P.J. Clarke's has sued Brookfield for $40 million and has also launched a campaign to get customers to petition Brookfield to allow P.J. Clarke's to stay right where it is. In the meantime, PJC is offering dining deals to lure customers past the scaffolding that currently blocks the restaurant's once-stunning views of the Hudson River and the Statue of Liberty. The "Construction Combo," available weekdays from noon to 4 p.m. for $11 includes a choice of cheeseburger, beef taco or a "New York Standard Foot Long" plus homemade mint lemon-limeade. From 5 p.m. to closing, customers can buy a "Renovation Rebate" with 2 for 1 draught beers and half-price oysters and clams on the half-shell. The sign outside the restaurant advertising the deals concludes with "Keep Clarke's in Battery Park" followed by "Please excuse Brookfield Place. We apologize for the construction."

A different vision for the Seaport: In response to the Op-Ed article entitled "The War on New York's Waterfront" written by Roland Lewis, Paul Greenberg and Joan K. Davidson in The New York Times (7/31/14), Philip St. Pierre, the senior general manager for The Howard Hughes

"...eating at great restaurants"...in the South Street Seaport.

Corporation in the Seaport wrote a letter to The Times that appeared under the heading "Revitalizing the South Street Seaport" (New York Times, 8/5/14). In the letter, he says that the Lewis, Greenberg, Davidson Op-Ed "does not reflect what is really happening at the South Street Seaport and our vision for the future. A trip to this special part of New York reveals something we haven't seen for decades - New Yorkers enjoying the waterfront and the historic district, eating at great restaurants, enjoying culture, admiring the tall ships. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, we have brought energy back to the Seaport to return the district to normalcy. Next is the complete

"...enjoying culture"...in the South Street Seaport.

transformation of Pier 17, a world-class shopping and dining destination that will offer breathtaking open space, including a rooftop performance venue." St. Pierre refers to The Howard Hughes Corporation as "stewards of this iconic destination" and says that HHC's "vision includes restoring the historic Tin Building, finishing the East River Esplanade, and rebuilding an active waterfront with a new marina, revitalized museum and world-class food market." For the complete letter, click here.

Equipped with blocks of linoleum, gouging tools of varying widths, pencils, paper, and a few ideas, Ali Osborn's block-printing class settled in around a large table at Bowne Printers in the South Street Seaport.

Bowne, at 211 Water St., is part of the South Street Seaport Museum and has an extensive collection of historic printing presses and antique type. Most of the time, Osborn and Gideon Finck, resident printers at Bowne since the fall of 2012, utilize this equipment to produce posters, cards and custom-made stationary. Linoleum block printing is just a small part of what they do.

However, Osborn holds what he calls "Block Parties" once a month during which he teaches the basic principles of linoleum block printing. The design, he tells his students, will be reversed when printed and the parts of the block gouged away will remain uninked, leaving the uncarved parts, like hills among valleys, to take the ink and make an impression on the paper.

Then he shows them how to transfer a drawing to a linoleum block and how to carve into it so that the base of each incision will be wider than its summit.

There is much to learn and the work is absorbing. Several hours pass quickly.

When it's time to print, Osborn brings out pots of ink, rollers and rice paper to show the class how to make images manually before taking everyone's block and locking it up on the Vandercook Press, one of many printing presses in the museum's collection.

Then the block-printing students take turns rolling the heavy levers of the press to produce a composite of everyone's work.

Raul Barquet, 24, a gallery assistant at the Jonathan Levine Gallery in Chelsea, said that he had tried linoleum block printing on his own but had learned a lot from Osborn. "There's a lot of information on the Internet," he said, "but it's not like getting first-hand instruction."

Marisa Ohara, 26, an operations and administrative associate at the South Street Seaport Museum, said that she had learned about positive and negative space and that "the more detail there is in the image, the harder it is to make a print." Osborn helped her to simplify her original design into something that she still liked but was easier to create.

Said a third member of the class, "I learned how much fun this is!"

The next block printing workshop takes place on Sunday, Aug. 10 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Because of the tools used, the workshop is suitable for people 12 and older. Reservations are required with a non-refundable $15 deposit for materials. The cost for the workshop is $50; $40 (for South Street Seaport Museum members). For more information, call (646)-628-2707 or email bowneprinters@seany.org. To buy tickets, click here.

Herman Sonny Blount was born 100 years ago this year in Birmingham, Alabama. He wanted no part of his birth name and the racism that went with it. He called himself "Sun Ra," founding an "Arkestra" whose music drew on black vaudeville, modern dance, Egyptian cosmology, Eastern philosophy, surrealism, kitsch and the Bible.

Sun Ra was a jazz composer, piano and synthesizer player, poet and philosopher as well as a bandleader. The Studio Museum in Harlem presented an art exhibition this past winter based on his influential art movement called "Afro Futurism."

Two years after Sun Ra died in 1993, alto saxophonist Marshall Allen became the Arkestra's leader. Now 90 years old, he still directs the Arkestra, which will be coming to Battery Park City's Wagner Park on Aug. 7 to close out this year's River & Blues festival.

"I first heard the Sun Ra Arkestra in the late 1970's and saw them perform on the Washington Mall," said Abby Ehrlich, director of park programming for the Battery Park City Parks Conservancy, the producer of the River & Blues festival.

   

In 2012 and 2013, she saw them again in Philadelphia, their home base since 1968, and hoped to book them for River & Blues. The Akestra's Battery Park City performance occurs between performances in Spain and Finland.   

 

"Sun Ra is a unique voice of the 20th century," said Ehrlich. "If you are not familiar with his writing and fantasy alternative to racial prejudice, you will find it intriguing. Sun Ra proclaimed himself a member of the Angel race, not the human race, based on painful experiences with racism."

 

Ehrlich said that the Arkestra's music ranges from Fletcher Henderson, swing and bebop to jazz improv. "It can sound otherworldly," she said.    

 

The concert starts at 7 p.m. in Wagner Park and is free. 

 

- Terese Loeb Kreuzer