Second Hearing for Marine Midland Bank Designation [UPDATE: Bank Designation OK’d]

See below for update.

Preservationists turned out to support designation of mid-century modern bank building. On April 2, 2013 and May 14, 2013, the Landmarks Preservation Commission heard testimony on the potential designation of the Marine Midland Bank building at 140 Broadway in Manhattan’s Financial District. The building was designed by the Gordon Bunshaft-helmed firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and exemplifies mid-century modernism in its unadorned curtain walls of black aluminum and bronze-tinted … <Read More>


Planning a Sustainable NYC: Howard Slatkin, Director of Sustainability, NYC Department of City Planning

Howard Slatkin, the director of sustainability for the New York City Department of City Planning, was a frequent visitor to NYC while growing up in New Jersey, but it was not until he moved to the City after studying history at Brown University, that he became interested in architecture and the social life of places. He earned a master’s degree in urban planning at Columbia University in 2000. At that time the concept of sustainability, … <Read More>


The East Midtown Rezoning and the Future of New York City

(Economic) Heart Trouble

More than 30 years after its last major zoning change, the economic heart of New York City merits a checkup. According to City planners, the prognosis for East Midtown is not good: an aging office stock, a congested pedestrian network, global competition, and the lack of new office development threaten to undermine the economic competitiveness of the City. The cure, proposed by the Bloomberg Administration, is a rezoning of 78 blocks of … <Read More>


Council Member Stephen Levin: Bringing the City Council to the People

District 33 – Brooklyn Heights, Greenpoint, parts of Williamsburg, Park Slope, Boerum Hill

Council Member Stephen Levin grew up just outside of New York City, in Plainfield, New Jersey. He knew he wanted to be in Brooklyn even while he was attending Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. To get there though, he dabbled with various jobs including working as a waiter (he was fired), a book store clerk, and an artist’s assistant. About a … <Read More>


Hearing on Former Art Deco Home for the Aged Draws Supportive Crowd

Retirement home served the Lower East Side’s Jewish community from 1931 until it closed in 2011. On February 12, 2013, the Landmarks Preservation Commission held a hearing on the potential designation of the Bialystoker Center and Home for the Aged at 228 East Broadway in Manhattan, as an individual City landmark. Built between 1929 and 1931 to designs by architect Harry Hurwit, the Art Deco Bialystoker Center was built by a Jewish benevolent society, established … <Read More>


City Council’s Domenic Recchia on South Brooklyn’s Past, Present, and Future

New York City Council Member Domenic M. Recchia Jr. represents District 47, covering Brooklyn’s Bensonhurst, Gravesend, Coney Island, and Brighton Beach neighborhoods. He is Chair of the City Council’s Finance Committee. He graduated from Brooklyn’s John Dewey High School, played football and received his undergraduate degree at Kent State University, and earned his juris doctor from Atlanta Law School. Recchia also has a Brooklyn private practice specializing in medical malpractice and personal injury.

Brooklyn beginnings.<Read More>