One hundred and forty feet below Grand Central Terminal sandhogs have excavated caverns spacious enough to dock a Carnival Cruise ship. The caverns will eventually support eight tracks and four platforms to handle Long Island Rail Road trains carrying upwards of 160,000 daily commuters to and from Manhattan’s East Side. This enormous construction project will cost over $8 billion when completed. It will redraw New York City’s commuter map by adding 7.75 miles of new tunnels that will run from Sunnyside Yards in Queens under the East River, down Park Avenue, into Grand Central, and continue down to 35th Street for a train holding yard. This big project is virtually invisible to office workers, commuters and tourists who happily continue on their way while the sandhogs blast and work in floodlit caverns below.

Dr. Michael Horodniceanu, the President of the MTA Capital Construction Company, is in charge of the project. He described the project at a CityLaw breakfast on October 14, 2011. [See the video on www.citylaw.org]. On November 8, 2011, Dr. Horodniceanu led a tour of the caverns and construction sites. From the Lower Level of Grand Central, the tour members, outfitted with vests, hard hats and muck boots, entered a subterranean world of anthropomorphic earthmoving machines and floodlit rock- and mud-scapes. Sandhogs were blasting three massive shafts for escalators that will eventually descend via slopes of 60 degrees to the mezzanine and platforms below. At the lower platform level workers waterproofed and finished the cavern’s ceiling. Other workers were applying, pouring or finishing concrete walls. The subterranean work will continue probably until 2016.

The scale of the East Side Access project rivals the original construction of Penn Station or Grand Central itself, although the artistry and grandeur of those earlier projects remain unequaled. The Robert Moses era of building big may have ended forty years ago, but big public works projects can still be built: witness the Second Avenue subway, the extension of the No. 7 line, the Third Water Tunnel and East Side Access. Robert Moses famously disliked tunnels because they did not change the skyline. The subterranean infrastructure projects currently being built will not change the skyline, but they ensure that New York City will continue to be a livable city.

Landmarks takes first steps to designate East Village/Lower East Side Historic District and East 10th Street Historic District. On June 28, 2011, Landmarks proposed designating the East Village/Lower East Side Historic District and the East 10th Street Historic District in Manhattan. The districts were developed in the early half of the 19th century and reflect the social history of the various waves of immigrant groups that once occupied these areas.

The proposed East Village/ Lower East Side Historic District would include 270 buildings along Second Avenue between St. Mark’s Place and East 2nd Street, as well as the adjacent side streets. The district would also include buildings along East 6th and East 7th Streets as far as Avenue A. The area is dominated by tenement apartment buildings which replaced older rowhouses built to house German and Irish immigrants in the 1850s. The tenements reflect a variety of architectural styles, including Italianate, Neo-grec, and Queen Anne. The area along Second Avenue became known as “Yiddish Rialto,” due to the number of Yiddish-language theaters. Latin American immigrants moved to the neighborhood after World War II. The area grew more desirable following the removal of the elevated Third Avenue line in 1955, and shortly thereafter the neighborhood was christened the “East Village” by realtors seeking to attract middle class tenants. (more…)

Designations span nearly a century of Manhattan history. On March 22, 2011, Landmarks designated the Japan Society Headquarters in Turtle Bay, the Engineers’ Club Building in Midtown, and the Lower East Side’s Neighborhood Playhouse as individual City landmarks. The buildings feature disparate architectural styles and represent distinct periods of the City’s history.

The Japan Society Headquarters at 333 East 47th Street was designed by Junzo Yoshimura and completed in 1971 on land donated by John D. Rockefeller III. The building fuses modernism and traditional Japanese architecture, and features a concrete, charcoal-colored facade, slatted window screens, and vertical brass latticework. At a public hearing, the Japan Society submitted a letter endorsing designation. 7 CityLand 94 (July 15, 2010). Before the designation vote, Chair Robert B. Tierney stated that Japan was “very much in our minds today,” noting the recent earthquake and tsunami that ravaged the country. (more…)

Museum sought to have its own food kiosk; claimed it would reduce concentration of food cart vendors outside main entrance. On October 19, 2010, Landmarks rejected a proposal to build a small, curvilinear food kiosk in front of the land-marked Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The Guggenheim and Restaurant Associates, which manages the museum’s Wright Restaurant and its third-floor cafe, proposed building the free-standing kiosk along the Fifth Avenue facade underneath the museum’s cantilevered overhang. Guggenheim representatives claimed that the kiosk would alleviate the congestion caused by the high number of sidewalk food carts that congregate in front of the museum.

Guggenheim CEO Mark Steglitz testified that the museum wanted to provide patrons and neighbors with high-quality food at a lower price than its indoor options. Steglitz said the kiosk, by limiting demand, would also minimize the “carnival like atmosphere” outside the museum created by street vendors. He also said it would complement the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building, “not compete with it.” (more…)

Contextual rezoning established streetwall and building height limits for an eight-block area below Union Square. On October 27, 2010, the City Council approved the Department of City Planning’s rezoning of portions of eight blocks in Manhattan’s East Village. The contextual plan rezoned an area bounded by the south side of East 13th Street, the north side of East 9th Street, Third Avenue, and the east side of Fourth Avenue from C6-1 to C6-2A. The blocks are adjacent to the area rezoned in 2008 by the East Village/Lower East Side Rezoning plan. 5 CityLand 165 (Dec. 2008).

The neighborhood is characterized by low- and mid-rise residential and mixed-use buildings with a uniform street wall. A handful of taller and bulkier buildings can be found along Third and Fourth Avenues. The area’s C6-1 zoning, unchanged since 1961, was inconsistent with the built character of the neighborhood and permitted tall and slender tower development, including setback dormitory buildings like those constructed in the neighborhood by New York University and the New School. (more…)