The Dinkins’ Autobiography: Filling in a Missing Chapter

 

Join us at the September 27th CityLaw Breakfast, featuring the Hon. David N. Dinkins, former New York City Mayor. This event is sponsored by the Center for New York City Law at New York Law School.  Click here to RSVP.

David N. Dinkins, New York City’s 106th mayor, now 86 years old, tells his story in his newly published autobiography, A Mayor’s Life: Governing New York’s Gorgeous Mosaic (Public Affairs 2013).

Dinkins … <Read More>


Wide Support Voiced for Designation of Carnegie Library [UPDATE: Seward Park Library Designated]

See below for update.

Testimony supporting designation of 1909 library focused on institution’s importance to generations of Lower East Side’s immigrant communities. On April 2, 2013, the Landmarks Preservation Commission held a public hearing on the potential landmark designation of the Seward Park branch of the New York Public Library. The branch, located at 192 East Broadway, is a Renaissance Revival building that was completed in 1909 to designs from the firm of Babb, … <Read More>


City Council Rejects Sale of City Property in Hopes for an African Burial Ground Museum [Update: Council Overrides Mayor’s Disapproval of Rejection of Sale]

Council Member Charles Barron lead the City Council’s rejection of 22 Reade Street sale in support of the site being used for a pending federally-funded African Burial Ground Museum. On November 13, 2012, the City Council unanimously rejected the disposition of city-owned property at 22 Reade Street and approved of the disposition of City-owned property at 49-51 Chambers Street. The City’s Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) proposed the sale of the properties in … <Read More>


Borough Hall Skyscraper Historic District approved

Real estate and business groups opposed creating new historic district in downtown Brooklyn. On September 13, 2011, Landmarks unanimously approved the creation of the Borough Hall Skyscraper Historic District in downtown Brooklyn. The district comprises twenty one buildings along Court Street, bounded to the north and south by Montague and Livingston Streets. The area was developed primarily in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and became Brooklyn’s commercial core. Notable buildings in the … <Read More>


Two stories and new facade added to Tribeca building

Image: Courtesy of SYSTEMarchitects.

Landmarks found that contemporary, sculptural facade recalled district’s historical character. On April 19, 2011, Landmarks unanimously approved Douglas and Michelle Monticciolo’s proposal to add two floors on top of a three-story building at 187 Franklin Street in the Tribeca West Historic District. The proposal, opposed by the community board, called for a new, sculptural-brick facade above the first floor. The existing building replaced a 1923 one-story garage that was demolished … <Read More>


Albert K. Butzel on Land Use Litigation and Lobbying

Albert K. Butzel did everything he could to avoid going to law school. After graduating from Harvard College, Butzel spent a year in Paris trying to become, as he put it, Ernest Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald. He made a deal with his father, who was an attorney, that he would go to law school if he did not succeed as a fiction writer. About a year later, Butzel enrolled at Harvard Law School.

Having … <Read More>