Fighting City Hall? (oldest one in America still in use as one)

Comments on July 21, 2003 "New development on the Bowery" at Wired New York

I worked in the research of archaeological significance for parts of the blocks on the Bowery just north of Houston. (Ed.- 1999) Recently, the LPC declared a Noho historic district, on the west side of the "...oldest road in America" (as cited in the Encyclopedia Americana) but ignored the east side of the street particularly 295 Bowery, home of Kate Millett, noted feminist, and the adjoining "Germania Hall" where the first woman elected to a union, Kate Mullaney, of Troy, NY was chosen sitting next to Susan B. Anthony. Former sites of Quaker and Methodist cemeteries (moved to LI) there are two non-denominational vault cemeteries in the neighborhood of 2nd St. and 4th St. and the Bowery. Other important events transpired there. My report was submitted without discussion and without approved edits from me and my coworker by a large firm, Parsons Inc., and paid for from Pasadena, CA. You might know them, they inspect cars in New Jersey, among other things.

Many months ago, before public revue and hearings, Avalon, believe it or not was posted on the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission's website as the supplier of middle income housing on site and please call this number if you are interested. This to me as a New Yorker, and one in the middle of trying to figure out if my small research project the "Cooper Square Urban Renewal" was not the Trojan Horse it was in 1971, 25 square blocks of the Lower Eastside. I can't believe they would allow such crass commercialism and open the Commission to calumny by allowing that business to post itself in that way.

Further, at the public hearing, which I viewed from the Bronx on Bronxnet cable, Kate Millett was given the floor to speak, and was interrupted many times and then told her time had run out, as she tried to explain the experience of 9/11/01 from her place, as the "ghosts" went walking by. The hearing again, did nobody any good and if I added the time spent in interruption to the time of her presentation it would have finished right on the mark. Again, the administration that would sell Wall Street to New Jersey.

By the way the "wrecking ball" is illegal in Manhattan, but across the river perfectly legal in the South Bronx.

Ed. - Both structures were torn down...you can visit the new construction and see other sights there near the location of the first commercial theater district in New York City in the 1820s (former CBGB's, the Amato Opera, oldest arts organization in the US, and Bouwerie Theatre landmark (1967), its Jean Cocteau Repertory Theater closed in March, it's where Bernadette Peters made her debut in "Anything Goes" I read, once a voice of the visit the top of the World Trade Center towers promo, and though other arts spaces including museums there today) on the new Google street level camera archives. Microsoft's 3D Virtual Earth shows the two structures still standing, and the view looking north (but not the other angles) has two apparent demolition dumpsters in front of the old Germania Hall and 295 Bowery buildings. Across the street is a very large promo painted on the building for the film "Dumb and Dumber II" (circa 2003?). The forum has recent photos.