Anjappar restaurant at 116 Lexington Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. Image Credit: Google Maps.

A Manhattan restaurant received health inspection during busy hour which resulted in five summonses with $900 penalties in total. Anjappar is an Indian cuisine restaurant located at 116 Lexington Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. On July 3, 2018, while the restaurant was preparing a large order, an inspector from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene made an unannounced visit. The inspector observed in Anjappar’s kitchen near an operating stove approximately eight pounds of cooked chicken in metal containers at room temperature. The inspector tested the meat and found it was above the required temperature. The inspector also observed that the waste pipe connected to a dishwasher was contaminated by accumulated grease, and that water leaking from an air conditioner was being improperly disposed of in a bucket on the kitchen floor. (read more…)

Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer

The decision to demolish Penn Station nearly 50 years ago haunts New York City today as we grapple with the need to expand our rail transit capacity in the 21st century. The current version of Penn Station, pinned beneath Madison Square Garden, is not merely an unsightly and unwelcoming entrance to our City, it is an overburdened facility that is incapable of being expanded with Madison Square Garden at its current location. That is why I am convinced that Madison Square Garden must move.

Ensuring that Penn Station could be modernized to meet future transit demands was the key issue facing my office when we recently reviewed Madison Square Garden’s request for a permit in perpetuity to continue operating in its present location. After an intensive review, I endorsed a 10-year permit and also recommended that we begin steps to relocate Madison Square Garden to a nearby site to pave the way for a badly-needed expansion of Penn Station. Fifty years ago, the station accommodated 200,000 daily passengers. Today it serves over 650,000—and the total will swell in future years.

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Hotel Mansfield

Turn-of-the-century residential hotels, which served rising professional class, among City’s newest landmarks. On June 12, 2012, Landmarks voted to designate two Midtown hotels constructed in the early 20th century as individual landmarks. The Beaux-Arts Hotel Mansfield is located at 12 West 44th Street, and the Renaissance Revival Martha Washington Hotel is located at 30 East 30th Street.

The 12-story Hotel Mansfield is on the same block as several other individual landmarks, including the Algonquin Hotel, the New York Yacht Club, the Harvard Club, and the former Yale Club. The firm of Renwick, Aspinwall and Owen designed the Hotel Mansfield, which was completed in 1902. The hotel catered to affluent single men and couples without children, who occupied rooms on a permanent and transient basis. The heavily ornamented building features a two-story rusticated limestone base, a balcony below a copper cornice, and a mansard roof with three large arched dormers. The building continues to function as a hotel. At a hearing on the designation in March (read more…)