Press Conference at the Central Park Mall. Image credit: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office.

Central Park has not been car-free for over a century, but things will change come summer. On April 20, 2018, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that Central Park will become completely car-free. The announcement came right before Earth Day 2018. Starting this June, the iconic greenspace’s Center Drive, Terrace Drive, East Drive, and West Drive will be permanently closed to cars. These closings follow the closure of Prospect Park’s entire loop drive in January. CityLand previously covered Prospect Park’s closings here. (more…)

Providing air conditioning units to low-income families and seniors is one of the strategies the City is enacting to help New Yorkers cope with summer heat during the COVID-19 pandemic. Image Credit: CityLand

As temperatures begin to rise and as Summer in NYC officially begins on Saturday, the City is eyeing sports and other large venues to use as cooling centers and is set to spend $55 million on air conditioners for elderly and low-income residents. On June 12, 2020, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced an update to the City’s plan to protect vulnerable New Yorkers from excessive indoor heat exposure. Now called the Get Cool NYC program, the update follows an announcement of the Covid-19 Heat Wave Plan on May 15, 2020, to outline how the City will keep New Yorkers cool during the coming summer months in the wake of Covid-19 shelter-in-place and social distancing requirements.  (more…)

Storage jar found in Seneca Village, part of the Seneca Village Unearthed online exhibit. Image Credit: LPC

The exhibited artifacts will help establish what life was really like for middle-class African American families in Seneca Village. On February 20, 2020, Landmarks Preservation Commission announced the launch of Seneca Village Unearthed, an online exhibit and collection of nearly three hundred artifacts from Seneca Village.  Seneca Village, formerly located in what is now Central Park, was once New York City’s largest community of free African American landowners in the mid-nineteenth century. The village was founded in the 1820s in what was then a rural area north of the city’s center located today between 82nd and 89th Street and Central Park West and the Great Lawn. (more…)

Council Members Corey Johnson, Donovan Richards, and Jumaane Williams (from left to right) in front of City Hall. Image Credit: mfy.org

UPDATE: On February 1, 2017, the City Council voted 47-0 to approve four bills that would help protect tenants of three-quarter houses in New York City. During the vote, Council Member Donovan Richards called three-quarter houses a wide spread problem that would not be cured by the bills and that the City would need to track progress on the issue to determine future responses. Council Member Ritchie Torres called predatory operators of three-quarter houses the “scum of the earth,” and expressed pride to be involved in the “game changer” legislative package.

Resolution 1035-2016, on which testimony was heard at the same committee hearing, remained in the Committee on General Welfare. The resolution would call on the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance to promulgate a rule that would increase public assistance rental allowance levels. (more…)

From Left to Right: Paul Selver, Jerold Kayden, Meenakshi Srinivasan, Kent Barwick. Image Credit: LPC

Speakers spoke of the different priorities of City government and other stakeholders, examined preservation strategies of municipalities nationwide, and considered changes in the legal landscape that could affect landmarking. On October 26, 2015, , Meenakshi Srinivasan, Chair of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, and Jerold Kayden, Professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, co-hosted an event titled “History in the Making: The New York City Landmarks Law at 50.” The event held at the New York City Bar Association consisted of multiple addresses and panels intended to provoke and challenge common assumptions and perceptions regarding historic preservation as the City’s landmarks law enters the second half of its first century. (more…)