Stop hating on Chupi
To The Editor: Re “Bono, ‘Chupi’ and mysteries of Schnabel’s ‘hidden palace’” (news article, Aug. 22):
What’s all the fuss about the name of Julian Schnabel’s palazzo built on top of some old building on 11th St.? With its deep-pink, fairytale allure, he can call it whatever he wants to. After all, it’s his palazzo, replete with Romeo and Juliet balconies and Venetian-style oval windows that come in all sizes. I’ll take his pink building with its faux, faded white splashes any day over the new glass-and-steel boxes just down the street.
Forget “Chupi.” Hey, I don’t like it either. But then again, it’s not my building. From the time that Schnabel’s broken-plate paintings were shown in the Whitney Biennial in the ’80s, he has been the one gutsy artist who has always been controversial, audacious and unique.
Always fair game for the press that loves putting down an original, Schnabel should be raised high as an artist who has the chutzpah to be his flamboyant self, regardless of what he does in painting, sculpture, filmmaking or designing a building.
Hedy O’Beil
What an elitist attitude
To The Editor: Gil Horowitz’s column “Washington Square’s ‘radical redesign’ was in ’69” (talking point, Sept. 5) is so cockeyed one despairs at how to begin a response to his density of ignorance and seemingly willful misstatements.
His calling the park “a slum” suggests he’s never laid eyes on a slum; such errant indifference to the known attributes that do distinguish the vital urban oasis that is our park! Perhaps Mr. Horowitz has not yet heard that, today, society thrives best where people of all classes may congregate creatively, which is the social dynamic brought forth by the design of landscape architect Robert Nichols and team, whom Horowitz criticizes relentlessly.
Ersatz elitist Horowitz is blind to the park’s vibrancy fostered by Nichols and his team; to Mr. Horowitz the park is “a slum.” This is indeed racism and elitism writ large.
Horowitz’s indifference to the socially salutary objectives that have been achieved by Nichols’s design makes sense in light of Horowitz’s admission in his first paragraph that he’s the appointed flack for the lower Fifth Ave. real estate interests (The Square Arch Realty Corporation) who do not relish the American ideal of “the melting-pot community.”
Horowitz’s off-the-wall observations regarding the folk revival of years past are singularly inapposite when Horowitz lamely infers, somehow, that Nichols’s design is linked in some fashion to the disappearance in the park of “world-class” folk singers and guitarists! In fact, the ’60s folk revival came and went prior to Nichols’s park design.
One could likewise refute each and every one of Horowitz’s absurd points, plus his assaults upon the park as it presently exists in the wake of Nichols’s inspired design concepts. Indeed, he’s so absurd, he reads as if he’s the ventriloquist’s puppet mouthpiece of Vellonakis, the Park Department’s in-house hack who’d overturn Nichols’s independent architectural achievements.
Let us not seek to desecrate the park’s living legacy that is Nichols’s creation and is enjoyed by virtually all parkgoers.
Robert Reiss
Hurrah for Horowitz!
To The Editor: “Washington Square’s ‘radical redesign’ was in ’69” (talking point, Gil Horowitz, Sept. 5) and “Horowitz had to be high” (letter, by Luther S. Harris, Sept. 12):
I join Gil Horowitz and the oldest neighborhood association in America, the Washington Square Association (now more than 100 years old), along with the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the Washington Square Lower Fifth Avenue Block Association, the Washington Square Hotel, the Square Arch Reality Corp. (Two Fifth Avenue), the Washington Square Park Association and Friends of Washington Square Park in supporting the Vellonakis redesign of Washington Square Park.
I am a graduate of Pratt Institute’s program in industrial design and for more than 20 years have had my own design studio in Lower Manhattan. My residence for many years is a co-op I purchased from my work as a designer. My apartment, on Washington Square North, is so close to Washington Square Park that visitors on my balcony say they feel like they are in a tree house in the park.
I testified at the Art Commission hearing in favor of moving the fountain and in favor of the entire Vellonakis design, as did a representative of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, along with many other groups. Contrary to Luther Harris’s claim that “the entire arts community” opposes moving the fountain, the Art Commission voted unanimously (11 to 0) to move the fountain.
Harris’s claim that “Nichols and the team respected the Olmstedian character of the square” is like saying that New York University respected the Edgar Allan Poe house by leaving remnants of the original Poe house design in its new building. The Nichols design radically changed the historic nature of Washington Square Park.
The Washington Square Arch, originally a temporary structure to celebrate the 100th anniversary of George Washington’s inauguration, had been placed on Fifth Ave. just north of the park. The permanent arch, whose cornerstone was set on May 30, 1890, and essentially completed by 1892 (dedicated in 1895), was simply moved a few feet south onto park property, its natural setting at the base of Fifth Ave. The two statues of Washington were added later. The original fountain and its smaller replacement (the one we have now) had been placed decades earlier, and the decision of placement of the arch was unrelated to placement of the fountain. The Art Commission, in approving moving the fountain, noted that this was a gesture to the 21st century.
Finally, Harris gets it wrong once again when he uses a city “court filing” to establish his claim that the reduction of the central plaza is 23 percent; that had been the original Vellonakis plan, but it was modified to 11 percent to meet the spirit of the Gerson-Quinn agreement. If Harris had training in design he would have seen this when he went to the Parks Department to view the modified plan the week of July 26, 2007. Instead, he is like a 78-rpm record stuck in a groove saying the same thing over and over, even when it is no longer true. What’s he been drinking?
Laura Lisa Smith
Immigration helps city
To The Editor: Every day, I am struck by the contrast between the reality of immigration that we live with here in New York City and the negative images of the issue that have shaped the recent legislative debate in Washington, D.C. In our great city, our immigrant population has grown steadily, and has helped us to continue to be the most dynamic city in the country, if not the world.
I believe that two key principles must shape future changes in immigration policy. First, there must be a path to citizenship for immigrants. To close the door to millions of hard-working immigrants to becoming citizens is to create a permanent category of second-class people.
Second, family unity is key. We must find a way to keep immigrant families together. A solid family provides a sound foundation for a healthy and prosperous society. Deporting parents leaves behind fractured families and deprives them of a significant source of income. Breaking families apart is not a path to a better America.
William C. Thompson, Jr. Thompson is New York City comptroller
Not that kind of a girl
To The Editor: Re “Dissidence and drama have filled up her life” (news article, Aug. 29):
I enjoyed Jerry Tallmer’s very poetic writing about my Aunt Leepee, and especially savored the “God Bless the Child” interludes. Great inspiration.
Just one correction: Lee Joseph was only married twice, not “several” times, which somehow made her out to be quite the woman about town in a not completely positive sense. Arthur Herzog was always cheating on her, which she made clear in one of the quotes. But after that necessary divorce, she met Joe Joseph, who had been betrayed by his own wife.
They married in her apartment some time in the early-to-mid-’60s — Unitarian minister Donald Harrington presided — and had a wonderful, enduring marriage, until Joe got hit with Parkinson’s and passed away 10 years ago. He had been blacklisted in the ’50s and was accused of spying for the Russians. Joe was a successful economist who graduated from the University of Michigan.
I relished Tallmer’s prose.
Shirley Kirsten
Invasion of black Cadillacs
To The Editor: Vehicles in waiting, large black Cadillac Escalades, some with their motors running, now line each side of Charles and Perry Sts. between Washington and West Sts. in the evenings. These vehicles, whose owners quickly scurry from their cars and into the Meier glass towers or the Perry St. restaurant, are seldom if ever seen walking their dogs or schmoozing with neighbors on the corner. No, they alight briefly from their black behemoths, heads bowed, and scurry into the glass towers or restaurant, leaving their vehicles to wait for them.
The bully Escalades with their darkened windows, high, wide bodies and drivers who wear sunglasses at night, can number a dozen or more on a weekend night just on Charles St. Aside from their menacing look, especially when there are several of them in a row, they’re taking all our neighborhood street parking. Residents, who for 20 years have parked their cars in the street and can’t afford garages, can no longer find spaces to park their cars.
The few garages over here now have waiting lists, and prices for those precious spaces are nearing $700 a month, such as at the garage on 11th St. Pier 40 is a parking option, but not for West Village residents who can’t afford much more than their old cars. As the new construction continues it will only get worse. We need to create new laws that do not allow these vehicles in waiting to take over our streets, where, by the way, they park for free.
Suzanne W. Stout
U-turn on bus opinion
To The Editor: While I previously wrote supporting the Chinatown buses staying where they are — under the Manhattan Bridge at 88 East Broadway — there seems to be a troubling recent development of new bus companies opening storefronts on East Broadway and Canal St., which means that buses will probably seek to load at these new locations.
Also, large numbers of buses have started to zoom up and down East Broadway in front of Seward Park, apparently on their way back and forth to the East River. When they zoom past this quiet, residential part of East Broadway, they threaten the many people, especially small children, who cross over from the park’s entrance. Can anything be done about this?
Rima Finzi-Strauss
