Friday, June 07, 2002
NEWS FROM PARK TOWERS
NEWS FROM PARK TOWERS
Volume 1, Number 1, Sporing/Summer 2002
From the Editor
Your Board of Directors has asked me to revive the Park Towers newsletter. This issue marks the approximately fourth rebirth of our tenants' publication. Our building is nearly 30 years old, having been started by the Goodstein firm in 1971-2, and completed for occupancy in 1973 . The coop effort turned it into a tenant-owned property in 1983. The first newsletter was established as a vital tenants' communications vehicle in the negotiating process . Once converted, the needs for regular communications abated , to revive during significant changes in the building - such as the replacement of the windows, new roofs, facade work under Local Law 10 (now LL 11), plaza renovation and construction of the gym. The publication has also attempted to keep you aware of changes in the neighborhood, significant local issues, restaurants, movies and theater.
This first revival issue will bring you up to date on the story of the plaza and other issues discussed in the 2002 Annual Meeting, and will tell you some stories of the neighborhood that may be of interest, particularly for newcomers. We do live in a neighborhood that drips with history, and I have been writing a column that deals with the subject. for the past nine years, in Town and Village, a weekly newspaper with 10,000 subscription-paying readers.. (It is named for Stuy Town and Peter Cooper Village, and dates back to their founding in 1947, another interesting story. For those who ask me what happened to GUN, or Gramercy-Union Square News, another Hagedorn venue, a freebie, it died after losing significant bucks.)
Contributing Editors Needed
I have written the first issue pretty much off the top of my head, using my own material, to get us up to speed. For continued publication contributing editors will have to carry the load. If you are willing to write about neighborhood restaurants, theaters, events, stories of what the children in the building are doing (who graduated what school and is going where is always important) and personal experiences of interest, leave me a note or copy, or e-mail (preferred) at Try to pend your story rather than attach I'm looking forward to your comments and contributions
Web Site Volunteers Needed
If you have the skills and would like to help establish a web site for Park Towers, let me know. The Board will allocate some funds, but this will be a volunteer effort, with opportunities for personal announcements as well as businesss. Significant announcements will continue to be printed.
Have a good summer, and send contributions.
Wally Dobelis 24C
Board of Directors Meeting
on June 6, 2002
I the president's report, Sam Haupt apologized for the slow completion of the Plaza project (more below), and indicated that under Local law 11 we have to initiate repairs to the brick facade.. We are well in the black, with $763K in the kitty, reports Treasurer Tom Mazza. Another good item was reported by Bob Lepisco - the average price of a two bedroom apartment in 2002 is $575, up from $558 in 2001, and $368K up from $348K, for one-bedroom.
Marco Valati , Susan Stewart and Jerry Harber were elected to the Board of Directors, the latter a from-the-floor volunteer, to replace Ronnie Green, a school administrator, who withdrew her candidacy because of work commitment. If you don't know it already, board membership is a serious obligation, demanding your presence at 8 AM every morning a week. You pay for your own taxi or fare and clear your way with your business obligations. We appreciate Ronnie's interest, and she will serve in other ways, on working committees, a method for tenant-shareholders and renters to participate in our local democracy. This is not one of those autocratic co-ops you read about in the papers, we have term limits (two three-year terms), and if you miss three meetings in a row, you are out.
Jerry Harber is a long-time tenant and a printing broker, who can make his schedule fit the building's requirements and can provide on-site assistance as needed.
The board and tenancy thank departing members Jane Austin, Tom Mazza and Bob Lepisco for their service. Sam Haupt, Jeff Margolis, Mary McGrath, Alex Rappola Carol Pfeiffer (sp?) and a Goodstein Management representative, partner Sandy Lewis, continue serving. For the record, Sam was president of the first board and is serving a second (third?) return term. His professionalism has been an important source of comfort for us all Incidentally, the long-term participation of board activists who contribute their professional skills and knowledge have been invaluable resources in the maintenance of our domicile - repairs, additions, refinancing. This is a rare building, where a maintenance fee increase was actually reversed, after a good refinancing.
Now to the plaza, a source of discomfort for us all. As Sam tells it, (I'm giving you the short version) the project was started in 2000 because of persistent leaks in the waterproof membrane under the plaza that periodically flooded the premises of our physician tenants below. A series of expensive expert examinations and localized repairs failed, and a complete renewal was started. The board also incorporated a disabled ramp, meeting the ADA rules and the anticipated requirements of an aging population.
The work was interrupted by a building inspection that revealed need for immediate repair of the balconies on the South side of the building. Plaza work could not be continued until the balconies were repaired. When that was done, plaza work resumed. There was a holdup in the ordering of the marble that replaced the travertine coverings, which had outlasted their lifespan and usefulness. The design of the planters and plants also went through two generations. It should be noted that several tenant committees worked with the Board, the architects and designers in choosing the colors and ambiance of the our personal "park." Tenant-shareholder participation is the Park Towers style, and it has been the method for such activities as the lobby design and re-carpeting of the hallways. As for the delays, the Board apologizes for the conditions we all had to endure, and hopes that the new ambiance and look make up for the suffering.
to make room for new construction. The LPC itself was established as a public agency in 1961, as the result of a public outcry over the overnight razing of the Pennsylvania Station, one of the most beautiful NYC buildings to come off the drawing boards of
Cigarette holes in the canopy
In the ensuing question period it was established that the new canopy, now firmly in place, had been damaged with cigarette holes, most likely from some acts of our fellow tenants. Please watch your ashtrays, friends, these holes are costly to patch.
The roof garden will not be planted this year, neither will the tree pits on 17th and 18th Streets and 3rd Ave, because of the water shortage. We are good citizens. Th Plaza is watered underground. The buckwheat hulls that blew all over the plaza from the mulch have been fastened down. And the reserve fund is about $300K, no immediate problems foreseen..
Stories of The Stuyvesant
Square Park Neighborhood
What is the meaning of the Stuyvesant Square Park Historic District signs posted on 17th Street and elsewhere? These signs should give comfort to those of us who worry about encroachment of tall buildings and loss of daylight and air.
The SSPHD was designated in 1975 by the Landmarks Preservation Commission to recognize that many of the buildings in the area around our Park, between 18 and 15th Streets, 1st Ave to Irving, have beauty and are historic treasures, and must not be torn down the noted McKim, Mead and White firm of architects. Since then over 1000 buildings have been so designated, and the SSP, Gramercy Park and Ladies Mile (roughly Broadway to 6th Ave 14th to 20th Streets) areas have been given the HD designation..
Individually designed landmarks worth visiting include the Friends Meeting House, an 1861 Greek revival building (the triangle of the gable faces the street), designed by Charles T. Bunting. Across the street, St. George's Church, 1846-56,a spire-less Romanesque revival by Blesh and Eidlitz, restored in 1867 after a fire attributed to Copperheads, Southern sympathizers who `objected to the Abolitionist policies of its fiery minister. It was largely paid for by its vestryman J. P. Morgan, the famous financier, who also paid for the Chapel (ornate Byzantine-Romanesque Reviva)l and the parish house (Gothic Revival).
Morgan also built the Lying-in Hospital, now Rutherford House, corner 17th and 2nd, as a gift for poor women. In its lobby you can view some memorabilia, including the Aesculapian Oath in beautiful graphics. Despite his awesome reputation, he was an economic stabilizer as well as an acquirer, and died with an estate of a measly $50 million, having donated away the lot, much of it invested in art (visit the Morgan Library).
The park itself was given to the city by Peter Gerardus Stuyvesant, the great-great-grandson of the peg-legged Governor-General of New Amsterdam when the Duke of York's navy occupied the city in 1662 and renamed it. The heir of Peter Suyvesant's farms, from 16th to 23rd Streets was developing the square as a fashionable residential area (he also donated the real estate for St. George's), and his influential family had to sue the city, to start fencing in the two spaces (squatters with pigs had started encroaching on it) and turn it into a public park. The 1849 fence is the longest ornate free-standing structure of its nature in the city. The West Park's fence was restored in the 1980's when the city found some unexpected funds, the East fence still waits for funding. Stuyvesant Park Neighborhood Association (SPNA), a group founded in 1974 to protect the park and its treasures, has for years been trying to get together the necessary $1-2 million. Meanwhile, it raises funds to subsidize the park department's budget for maintaining the ambiance. If you'd like to join, its President Carol Schachter lives in the building. Membership is $20/yr (??) for families, and you can send the money, with your names, address and interests, Box 1320, Cooper Station, NY 10276. Or call the treasurer Jack Taylor, at 475-2850, for an application. Taylor is a tireless preservationist who has had a lot to do with the landmarks designation for the former Guardian Life building, now the W hotel (d'Oensch and Yost 1911, with a four-story Second Empire mansard roof, one of the largest in the city), the former Stuyvesant High School, a Beaux-Arts beauty, designed by the great school superintendent, Charles B. J. Snyder, with the Corinthian-column-rich Union Square Savings Bank, now a theater, on 16th and Park Ave South, and the grand old Ladies Mile store buildings now renovated to their former glory on Sixth Ave, to name a few. The preservation effort is continuing, and you too can participate, and there. is history, and stories, still to explore.
Examples? Getting back closer to home, the Scheffel Hall, former Joe King's Rathskeller, across 3rd Ave, was once rumored to be the meeting house of German sympathizers, before WWII. During its current renovation into an exercise club by Anthony Macciavone(Sp???) of Sal Anthony's, the workingmen uncovered an early 20th Century glass ceiling, of unknown origin .The bicycle shop, next to the Greek Orthodox Church on 17th Street (originally also part of Scheffel Hall), has a probably 17th Century basement structure, and may have been path of Peter Stuyvesant's farm. The upstairs of the building itself was once the office in which Henry Luce founded Time magazine in 1922, the first of the elegant magazines that form the backbone of the Time-Warner -AOL-CNN empire, a shaper of our awareness.
More neighborhood history is to come- the Union Square beauties, the Broadway treasures - Lord & Taylor, Gorham, the spooky Macintyre Building, rich terracotta and cast-iron structures with stories to match.. Stay tuned. .
Useful Hints
If repairs or helping hands are needed, do not instruct Mr. Nikc in the lobby while you are running off to work, and expect him to remenber. Write up your problem in the Repairs book, open on ther plant-holder'sdge next to the package room.
Schedule your deliveries for the off rush hours.
For my own mental health, I try to say a nice thing to a stranger every day. The elevator is the perfect venue, and a "hello" works.
Volume 1, Number 1, Sporing/Summer 2002
From the Editor
Your Board of Directors has asked me to revive the Park Towers newsletter. This issue marks the approximately fourth rebirth of our tenants' publication. Our building is nearly 30 years old, having been started by the Goodstein firm in 1971-2, and completed for occupancy in 1973 . The coop effort turned it into a tenant-owned property in 1983. The first newsletter was established as a vital tenants' communications vehicle in the negotiating process . Once converted, the needs for regular communications abated , to revive during significant changes in the building - such as the replacement of the windows, new roofs, facade work under Local Law 10 (now LL 11), plaza renovation and construction of the gym. The publication has also attempted to keep you aware of changes in the neighborhood, significant local issues, restaurants, movies and theater.
This first revival issue will bring you up to date on the story of the plaza and other issues discussed in the 2002 Annual Meeting, and will tell you some stories of the neighborhood that may be of interest, particularly for newcomers. We do live in a neighborhood that drips with history, and I have been writing a column that deals with the subject. for the past nine years, in Town and Village, a weekly newspaper with 10,000 subscription-paying readers.. (It is named for Stuy Town and Peter Cooper Village, and dates back to their founding in 1947, another interesting story. For those who ask me what happened to GUN, or Gramercy-Union Square News, another Hagedorn venue, a freebie, it died after losing significant bucks.)
Contributing Editors Needed
I have written the first issue pretty much off the top of my head, using my own material, to get us up to speed. For continued publication contributing editors will have to carry the load. If you are willing to write about neighborhood restaurants, theaters, events, stories of what the children in the building are doing (who graduated what school and is going where is always important) and personal experiences of interest, leave me a note or copy, or e-mail (preferred) at Try to pend your story rather than attach I'm looking forward to your comments and contributions
Web Site Volunteers Needed
If you have the skills and would like to help establish a web site for Park Towers, let me know. The Board will allocate some funds, but this will be a volunteer effort, with opportunities for personal announcements as well as businesss. Significant announcements will continue to be printed.
Have a good summer, and send contributions.
Wally Dobelis 24C
Board of Directors Meeting
on June 6, 2002
I the president's report, Sam Haupt apologized for the slow completion of the Plaza project (more below), and indicated that under Local law 11 we have to initiate repairs to the brick facade.. We are well in the black, with $763K in the kitty, reports Treasurer Tom Mazza. Another good item was reported by Bob Lepisco - the average price of a two bedroom apartment in 2002 is $575, up from $558 in 2001, and $368K up from $348K, for one-bedroom.
Marco Valati , Susan Stewart and Jerry Harber were elected to the Board of Directors, the latter a from-the-floor volunteer, to replace Ronnie Green, a school administrator, who withdrew her candidacy because of work commitment. If you don't know it already, board membership is a serious obligation, demanding your presence at 8 AM every morning a week. You pay for your own taxi or fare and clear your way with your business obligations. We appreciate Ronnie's interest, and she will serve in other ways, on working committees, a method for tenant-shareholders and renters to participate in our local democracy. This is not one of those autocratic co-ops you read about in the papers, we have term limits (two three-year terms), and if you miss three meetings in a row, you are out.
Jerry Harber is a long-time tenant and a printing broker, who can make his schedule fit the building's requirements and can provide on-site assistance as needed.
The board and tenancy thank departing members Jane Austin, Tom Mazza and Bob Lepisco for their service. Sam Haupt, Jeff Margolis, Mary McGrath, Alex Rappola Carol Pfeiffer (sp?) and a Goodstein Management representative, partner Sandy Lewis, continue serving. For the record, Sam was president of the first board and is serving a second (third?) return term. His professionalism has been an important source of comfort for us all Incidentally, the long-term participation of board activists who contribute their professional skills and knowledge have been invaluable resources in the maintenance of our domicile - repairs, additions, refinancing. This is a rare building, where a maintenance fee increase was actually reversed, after a good refinancing.
Now to the plaza, a source of discomfort for us all. As Sam tells it, (I'm giving you the short version) the project was started in 2000 because of persistent leaks in the waterproof membrane under the plaza that periodically flooded the premises of our physician tenants below. A series of expensive expert examinations and localized repairs failed, and a complete renewal was started. The board also incorporated a disabled ramp, meeting the ADA rules and the anticipated requirements of an aging population.
The work was interrupted by a building inspection that revealed need for immediate repair of the balconies on the South side of the building. Plaza work could not be continued until the balconies were repaired. When that was done, plaza work resumed. There was a holdup in the ordering of the marble that replaced the travertine coverings, which had outlasted their lifespan and usefulness. The design of the planters and plants also went through two generations. It should be noted that several tenant committees worked with the Board, the architects and designers in choosing the colors and ambiance of the our personal "park." Tenant-shareholder participation is the Park Towers style, and it has been the method for such activities as the lobby design and re-carpeting of the hallways. As for the delays, the Board apologizes for the conditions we all had to endure, and hopes that the new ambiance and look make up for the suffering.
to make room for new construction. The LPC itself was established as a public agency in 1961, as the result of a public outcry over the overnight razing of the Pennsylvania Station, one of the most beautiful NYC buildings to come off the drawing boards of
Cigarette holes in the canopy
In the ensuing question period it was established that the new canopy, now firmly in place, had been damaged with cigarette holes, most likely from some acts of our fellow tenants. Please watch your ashtrays, friends, these holes are costly to patch.
The roof garden will not be planted this year, neither will the tree pits on 17th and 18th Streets and 3rd Ave, because of the water shortage. We are good citizens. Th Plaza is watered underground. The buckwheat hulls that blew all over the plaza from the mulch have been fastened down. And the reserve fund is about $300K, no immediate problems foreseen..
Stories of The Stuyvesant
Square Park Neighborhood
What is the meaning of the Stuyvesant Square Park Historic District signs posted on 17th Street and elsewhere? These signs should give comfort to those of us who worry about encroachment of tall buildings and loss of daylight and air.
The SSPHD was designated in 1975 by the Landmarks Preservation Commission to recognize that many of the buildings in the area around our Park, between 18 and 15th Streets, 1st Ave to Irving, have beauty and are historic treasures, and must not be torn down the noted McKim, Mead and White firm of architects. Since then over 1000 buildings have been so designated, and the SSP, Gramercy Park and Ladies Mile (roughly Broadway to 6th Ave 14th to 20th Streets) areas have been given the HD designation..
Individually designed landmarks worth visiting include the Friends Meeting House, an 1861 Greek revival building (the triangle of the gable faces the street), designed by Charles T. Bunting. Across the street, St. George's Church, 1846-56,a spire-less Romanesque revival by Blesh and Eidlitz, restored in 1867 after a fire attributed to Copperheads, Southern sympathizers who `objected to the Abolitionist policies of its fiery minister. It was largely paid for by its vestryman J. P. Morgan, the famous financier, who also paid for the Chapel (ornate Byzantine-Romanesque Reviva)l and the parish house (Gothic Revival).
Morgan also built the Lying-in Hospital, now Rutherford House, corner 17th and 2nd, as a gift for poor women. In its lobby you can view some memorabilia, including the Aesculapian Oath in beautiful graphics. Despite his awesome reputation, he was an economic stabilizer as well as an acquirer, and died with an estate of a measly $50 million, having donated away the lot, much of it invested in art (visit the Morgan Library).
The park itself was given to the city by Peter Gerardus Stuyvesant, the great-great-grandson of the peg-legged Governor-General of New Amsterdam when the Duke of York's navy occupied the city in 1662 and renamed it. The heir of Peter Suyvesant's farms, from 16th to 23rd Streets was developing the square as a fashionable residential area (he also donated the real estate for St. George's), and his influential family had to sue the city, to start fencing in the two spaces (squatters with pigs had started encroaching on it) and turn it into a public park. The 1849 fence is the longest ornate free-standing structure of its nature in the city. The West Park's fence was restored in the 1980's when the city found some unexpected funds, the East fence still waits for funding. Stuyvesant Park Neighborhood Association (SPNA), a group founded in 1974 to protect the park and its treasures, has for years been trying to get together the necessary $1-2 million. Meanwhile, it raises funds to subsidize the park department's budget for maintaining the ambiance. If you'd like to join, its President Carol Schachter lives in the building. Membership is $20/yr (??) for families, and you can send the money, with your names, address and interests, Box 1320, Cooper Station, NY 10276. Or call the treasurer Jack Taylor, at 475-2850, for an application. Taylor is a tireless preservationist who has had a lot to do with the landmarks designation for the former Guardian Life building, now the W hotel (d'Oensch and Yost 1911, with a four-story Second Empire mansard roof, one of the largest in the city), the former Stuyvesant High School, a Beaux-Arts beauty, designed by the great school superintendent, Charles B. J. Snyder, with the Corinthian-column-rich Union Square Savings Bank, now a theater, on 16th and Park Ave South, and the grand old Ladies Mile store buildings now renovated to their former glory on Sixth Ave, to name a few. The preservation effort is continuing, and you too can participate, and there. is history, and stories, still to explore.
Examples? Getting back closer to home, the Scheffel Hall, former Joe King's Rathskeller, across 3rd Ave, was once rumored to be the meeting house of German sympathizers, before WWII. During its current renovation into an exercise club by Anthony Macciavone(Sp???) of Sal Anthony's, the workingmen uncovered an early 20th Century glass ceiling, of unknown origin .The bicycle shop, next to the Greek Orthodox Church on 17th Street (originally also part of Scheffel Hall), has a probably 17th Century basement structure, and may have been path of Peter Stuyvesant's farm. The upstairs of the building itself was once the office in which Henry Luce founded Time magazine in 1922, the first of the elegant magazines that form the backbone of the Time-Warner -AOL-CNN empire, a shaper of our awareness.
More neighborhood history is to come- the Union Square beauties, the Broadway treasures - Lord & Taylor, Gorham, the spooky Macintyre Building, rich terracotta and cast-iron structures with stories to match.. Stay tuned. .
Useful Hints
If repairs or helping hands are needed, do not instruct Mr. Nikc in the lobby while you are running off to work, and expect him to remenber. Write up your problem in the Repairs book, open on ther plant-holder'sdge next to the package room.
Schedule your deliveries for the off rush hours.
For my own mental health, I try to say a nice thing to a stranger every day. The elevator is the perfect venue, and a "hello" works.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 4:17 PM 
