Cooper Union

In what was billed by his campaign as a major economic address at the Cooper Union’s Great Hall this morning, Barack Obama called for a more responsibly regulated economy with stricter penalties on abusers of the market and less dependence on lobbyists.

But before he outlined his vision for a “21st century regulatory system,” Obama engaged in some old-world politicking by trying to court Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who introduced him to the audience.

Bloomberg, who has carefully maintained his neutrality in the race, had said that he hoped all the candidates would address serious policy issues. He said solutions to the problems facing the country were possible, no matter how complex and costly, but that it was first necessary to get beyond “tired partisan platitudes” and special interest “pandering.”

“I want to thank the mayor of this great city, Mayor Bloomberg, for his extraordinary leadership,” Obama said in front of eight American flags and at the same podium from which Abraham Lincoln is believed to have delivered his “Right Makes Might” speech in 1860. “He shows us what we can achieve when we bring people together.”  read more »

The folks involved with a new building at 51 Astor Place sent out a rendering of the proposed tower last night, and it seems architect Fumihiko Maki plans a building rather reminiscent of his planned Tower 4 at the World Trade Center (a.k.a. 150 Greenwich Street), with a corrugated facade and distinct angles. The site sits just across from the school’s signature 1859 Cooper Union Foundation Building.  read more »

Developer Edward Minskoff has agreed to buy a building from Cooper Union, with plans to raze the structure at 51 Astor Place and put a Fumihiko Maki-designed office building in its place, according to a report in The Real Deal.

The price of the building sale was not revealed. Mr.  read more »

Cooper Union seems to be moving closer to selling its engineering building at 51 Astor Place, as it recently bought itself out of a clause with the city requiring that the building be used solely for educational use, property records show.  read more »

Here is a clip of Michael Bloomberg chatting with Tom Brokaw at Cooper Union last night explaining why being mayor in New York is better than being the top official in the country.

Bloomberg explained that if, say, he wanted to change the direction of traffic on Fifth Avenue, “it may be a dumb idea, but tomorrow morning, there’d be a cop on every corner. Every sign would be changed. I mean, it would go northbound.” After some laughter from the audience, he said, “Presidents can’t do that.”

He’s still got it, Mario Cuomo. Remember him?    read more »

• What are Cooper Union students doing about the impending destruction of the Hewitt Building? They're staging school-wide walkouts (and tossing around cruel words like disenfranchisement). Apparently, these young artists really don't want to move out to studios in Long Island City, where they'll work until Cooper Union gets a newer and greener $120 million building. [Villager]
• The Opening Paragraph of the Day, presented in its glorious entirety: Park Slope's pampered tykes might soon have one more reason to love life in Brooklyn. FAO Schwarz -- toy store and child magnet since 1862 -- said this week it might open a satellite shop in the Slope. [Brooklyn Papers]
• Down in the Financial District, $90 million will help pay for a luxury condo conversion. So, the old Chase Manhattan Bank HQ will turn into "20 Pine," with $90 million-worth of ebony-stained hardwood floors, high-end wooden cabinetry, Hudson River views, a pool, a spa, a yoga studio and, best of all, a golf simulation room. [Multi-Housing News]
• Brownstoner reports that Joshua Guttman (who has the world's "universal contempt") is going to tear down a Dumbo foundry built by Brooklyn Bridge man E.W. Bliss. Or will 205 Water Street (aka 188 Plymouth) be saved by local preservationists? Tune in tomorrow. [Brownstoner]
- Max Abelson
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The latest New Republic has an emotional attack on Tony Judt, John Mearsheimer, and Stephen Walt by Leon Wieseltier. Wieseltier says that W-M are antisemites who don't understand how policy is formulated and Tony Judt is trading in antisemitic legends. He gets very angry. All this stems from the Walt Mearsheimer paper and Judt's defense of their ideas at Cooper Union.

A few points:

—The piece underscores the fact that the media failed to cover a hugely significant event (the Cooper Union Debate). Wieseltier says that he understands that the moderator Anne-Marie Slaughter refused to engage the question of whether the original LRB paper was antisemitic. I was there. She specifically asked that question at the start. It was openly debated. How unfortunate that a serious publication cannot even get this basic point right, because the author is dealing with hearsay.

—Wieseltier tries to dismiss these ideas by saying that they are tk. He is saying, They're echoing the Protocols of Zion, so there are going to be pogroms. This is a form of name calling, and it keeps people from going near the questions. But the questions are just too important, and in the end journalists and writers should deal with facts. When Judt said that the New York Times required him to identify himself as a Jew before he could write a support of the paper, and when Rashid Khalidi said that he rarely gets to speak about Palestinian issues in a mainstream forum, they were both speaking about the taboo that continues to exist on this subject because of, because of—let's be straight about this, Jewish power in the discourse, and the fear of offending Jews. I've dealt with this from editors too long to try and dissimulate about it. When Judt spoke in the Observer last week about Jewish influence and power, he was speaking openly and honestly.

—The stunning thing about the debate, in retrospect, is that when it was done, no Jews were murdered in the streets of the East Village. At least not on the north side of Cooper Union. I should stop joking. The stunning thing was that 900 people entered a hall with diverse opinions, some of them called out abuse and mockery during the debate, but not many. The seven men and woman on stage exchanged ideas without being muzzled or bitch-slapped

A smart friend tells me that despite the excited crowds gathered outside Cooper Union 3 weeks back, and the great excitement in the hall, there has been hardly a drop of ink spilled on the Israel lobby debate sponsored by the London Review of Books. The Forward covered it, the Observer covered it, so did the N.Y. Sun in passing. But as for the mainstream, zilch, on one of the most fascinating and educational evenings in memory, and an evening that consisted not of bombast or invective or accusation, or even screaming from the gallery, but in an earnest and concerted dialog aimed at determining some part of the truth. The Times is lactose-intolerant on the matter. It will be fascinating to see what coverage John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt get when FSG puts out their book. As it is, the traditional fear persists: that the seas will close over them...

Rebel Bachelors    read more »

Rebel Bachelors  read more »

Our tale this week of university real estate woe left out a lot of worthwhile research from the City Project paper on which we reported. One bit of that is how the Chrysler Building has been standing there, all 1,048 tall of it, for 76 years without it contributing any property tax to the city. That's because a court decision exempted the owners of the land beneath it, Cooper Union, from real estate tax liability. The commercial tenants in the building pay what are called "tax-equivalency charges, but that money goes to Cooper Union instead. Neil deMause has more details.  read more »

-Matthew Schuerman

In the morning, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity will hold a news conference on the appeals court ruling on New York City’s schools at the law offices of Simpson, Thatcher & Bartlett just before a commemoration of the 95th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire is held on the corner of Green Street and Washington Place.

And if that’s not enough for you, Howard Zinn will narrate an evening of dramatic readings from his book, Voices of a People’s History of the United States at The Cooper Union.

—Nicole Brydson

On a north-facing triangle of Astor Place, the skeleton of a new 21-story residential tower has been  read more »

On the southeast corner of Third Avenue and Ninth Street:Through a glass door and up a dingy flight  read more »

An architectural holy war has erupted over a plot of land where the East meets the West Village.The  read more »