As we approach the end of 2008, we look back at all that we have accomplished this year. Not only did we welcome a number of new businesses to the district, but we've witnessed the continued blossoming of the residential population, providing us with new businesses and neighbors who are vested in the ongoing success of the area. Some noteworthy new development projects include the ongoing renovation of 200 Fifth Avenue, the development of several new hotels, including two on Broadway, and residential development on 23rd Street across from Madison Square Park. We look forward to these projects coming to fruition in 2009.

The Flatiron Partnership celebrated its second anniversary last summer and we have steadfastly continued to carry out our commitment to the core programs of sanitation, public safety and neighborhood marketing and promotion, in addition to launching new initiatives such as the 2008 Speaker Series. Our district saw an amazing transformation this year, courtesy of the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) with the creation of the new public plazas at the intersection of Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street, and we are proud to be partnering with DOT on this project. We also took another important first step toward our broader public improvement goals by commissioning a master plan for streetscape and beautification projects, and we have set our sights on implementing the first round of projects in 2009. To view the master plan, please visit the BID website at www.discoverflatiron.org.

We are thankful to our members, sponsors and partners who have taken the time to get involved in our efforts, and we encourage others to do the same in the coming months and years.

On behalf of the Board of Directors and staff, thank you again for your continued commitment to this neighborhood. Have a safe and happy holiday season.

Sincerely,

Gregg Schenker, Chairman
Jennifer Brown, Executive Director

Flatiron for the Holidays

As the upcoming 2008 holiday season looks to be a difficult one for businesses and shoppers alike, the Flatiron Partnership is working especially hard on behalf of its members to attract shoppers and visitors, promote a cheerful holiday spirit and ensure a pleasant and enjoyable visit to the Flatiron district.

Flatiron Holiday Shopping Guide

The Flatiron Holiday Shopping Guide is now available at retailers and restaurants throughout the district and on the BID website at www.discoverflatiron.org.

The guide lists, by category, the extensive shopping opportunities throughout the district and the adjacent area and folds out to reveal a map of the district so you can plot your holiday shopping blitz. To keep your energy up, the guide includes a directory of the fine dining establishments around the district with addresses and phone numbers. This limited printing will be available through January.

Flatiron Holiday Shopping Guide - Companion Poster

Along with the shopping guide, the BID is distributing a companion poster to retailers and other businesses promoting the holiday season and the shopping guide. Business owners throughout the district are encouraged to display the 11"x17" poster in their store windows, and we encourage you to patronize these participating retailers.

Holiday Gift Banners

Also debuting in November were the BID's newly designed holiday banners that adorn streetlamps throughout the district, spreading holiday cheer and brightening up the dark winter skies.

Clean Streets & Public Safety

The BID's Clean Team continues to keep the streets looking fantastic while the BID's Public Safety Officers carry on their role as neighborhood ambassadors and guardians, providing information to the public and keeping a watchful eye ensuring this holiday season is a safe and secure one.

In The Plazas

Tree Planting & Bike Rack Update

The Flatiron Partnership is continuing to coordinate efforts for additional street tree plantings and bike rack placements in the district. Trees and bike racks are available to property owners free of charge through city programs. If interested, property owners should send a request to the BID.

In the past year, the BID organized the planting of 12 new trees in the district through a Parks Department initiative called MillionTreesNYC, and submitted 12 applications for bike racks via the Department of Transportation's CITYRACKS program.

These projects, which help enhance the neighborhood aesthetic, depend on participation by property owners for their success. To request trees or bike racks, send an e-mail to info@flatironbid.org, and include the name and contact information of the property owner and the address of the building where a tree or bike rack is desired.

For more information on MillionTreesNYC, click here. For the CITYRACKS program, click here. To contact the BID office, call (212) 741-2323.

Speaker Series: Energy Efficiency

Two experts on the subject of energy were the main attractions at the Flatiron Partnership's final Speaker Series program of 2008 and they both agreed that the crucial word right now and in the years to come is "efficiency."

Peter Meloro, Manager of Account Executives at Con Edison, and Bridgett Neely, Vice President of Energy Efficiency at the New York City Economic Development Corporation, told Flatiron residents and business owners of plans by the private and public sectors to meet the rising energy demand expected in the next couple of decades. They covered subjects ranging from the efficiency of "green rooftops" to the energy conserved by not using screen savers on a computer.

Meloro and Neely, who were introduced to the audience by Jennifer Brown, Executive Director of the Flatiron Partnership, spoke on Nov. 19 at the Park Avenue South branch of TD Bank (formerly Commerce Bank) at 21st Street. Robert Jacobs, Branch Manager, welcomed attendees, who also enjoyed a complimentary breakfast buffet. The program was called "A Breakfast Symposium on Energy Efficiency Programs, Practices & You."

Celebrate Flatiron Partnerships

Some 150 business leaders, real estate executives, educators, residents and friends defied the raindrops on the evening of Nov. 5 to fill the magnificently restored Prince George Ballroom for the third annual Celebrate Flatiron Partnerships cocktail party.

With chamber music provided by the Ambience Strings quartet, and hors d'oeuvres and beverages provided by Blue Smoke, the evening was a festive prelude to the holiday season.

Gregg Schenker of ABS Partners Real Estate, Chairman of the Flatiron Partnership, made brief welcoming remarks, followed by Jennifer Brown, Executive Director of the BID, who cited some of the area's more recent public improvement projects and outlined some that are upcoming.

They include the new public plazas at the intersection of Fifth Avenue, 23rd Street and Broadway, the streetscape and beautification programs planned for 2009 and the BID's second annual community survey, which got under way the following day (see related story in this newsletter).

Although Celebrate Flatiron Partnerships is generally held just after Thanksgiving, this year's event was earlier to help launch the BID's new Flatiron Holiday Shopping Guide and companion poster, both of which were included in festive gift bags given to all guests. The gift bags also held the newly updated Discover Flatiron Map and a magnet that displays the new holiday banner design.

Wyndam Garden Hotel

Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, an international chain with more than 6,550 hotels on six continents, has come to the Flatiron district.

The Wyndham Garden Hotel-Manhattan Chelsea West opened its doors on Election Day, Nov. 4, at 37 West 24th Street, steps away from Sixth Avenue. The hotel is on the edge of the Flatiron and Chelsea neighborhoods and is within easy walking distance of many others, including Gramercy, Union Square and the West Village.

It is a 17-story high-rise with 124 guest rooms, each of which is outfitted with king-size bed, 32-inch HDTV and complimentary wired and wireless Internet access. Five of the rooms, including two suites, have access to balconies facing south. All rooms are non-smoking.

There is a Wyndham Café, E.R.L. coffee shop just off the lobby, currently offering light breakfasts, sandwiches and panini. E.R.L., according to Philip Cham, Wyndham Garden's general manager, stands for "eat, refresh, live." All coffee products are from Starbuck's. The Café menu is also available for room service.

Room rates, said Cham, are approximately $229 to $329.

The hotel was Wyndham's first in Manhattan, but barely. Less than two weeks later, on Nov. 17, the Wyndham Garden Hotel-Midtown Convention Center at 341 West 36th Street welcomed its first guests.

The Hog Pit

The Hog Pit, a Southern soul food and barbecue restaurant, is closing its original location in the meatpacking district on Dec. 23, but has opened a new one in the Flatiron district, at 37 West 26th Street, just east of Sixth Avenue. The 2,400-square-foot restaurant, where Black Pearl used to be, offers a full bar and food menu, including a dessert of honeyed bacon with whipped cream, a signature dish of owner Damon Dell. Two flat-screen televisions, one of them with a 60-inch screen, and two arcade games provide additional entertainment.

The Hog Pit is open daily from noon to 4 a.m. For reservations, call (212) 213-4871. For more information, click here.

Chickpea

Chickpea has opened its third restaurant in Manhattan at 688 Sixth Avenue, between 21st and 22nd Streets. As the name implies, chickpeas are at the core of the Mediterranean-style recipes and according to the company, its food is "always baked, never fried." Manager Robert Galindo pointed out that food can be ordered either as a pocket pita, a salad, a hummus plate or a platter. From there, variations of hummus and salad fixings, falafel, meat or chicken can be selected.

Chickpea is open from 11 a.m. to midnight daily. To contact the store, call (212) 243-6275, or click here.

Holiday Tree Lighting

The Flatiron Partnership is once again a proud sponsor of Mad. Sq. Holiday, the Madison Square Park Conservancy's annual tree lighting ceremony.

Join us on Tuesday, Dec. 9, at 4:30 p.m., at the park's Northern Reflecting Pool to officially welcome the holidays to Madison Square Park, the site of the nation's first community Christmas tree back in 1912.

This free celebration will include a holiday light countdown, performances by The New York Life Singers and kid-rock band AudraRox, wintery treats by Olana and glittering decorations throughout the park.

Sidney Mishkin Gallery: Independent Visions/Feminist Perspectives

Independent Visions/Feminist Perspectives is a show by 12 significant female artists who worked outside the women's organizations of the late 1960s and 1970s and who were not necessarily interested in female imagery as a methodology, but still saw themselves as feminists. Works include painting, sculpture, photography, images from a digital database and a greenhouse structure by Nina Yankowitz entitled "Buried Treasures/Secrets of the Sciences" that uses video projections to tell the stories of women whose contributions to science were overlooked at the time they were made.

The show will run through Dec. 17 at the Sidney Mishkin Gallery at Baruch College, 134 East 22nd Street. Hours are Mondays through Fridays, noon to 5 p.m., and Thursdays, noon to 7 p.m. For more information, click here.

Town & Village Toy Drive

Since its inception in 1947, Town & Village has been conducting an annual toy drive. This year, donations will be accepted for young patients at Beth Israel Medical Center. Last year, 150 new toys were donated, all in time for the holidays.

Gifts appropriate for children of all ages will be accepted as long as they are new. Due to hospital policy, used toys, even gently used, can't be accepted for health reasons.

Unwrapped toys may be brought to one of the drop-off centers: M&T Bank at 397 First Avenue near 23rd Street or the Town & Village office at 20 West 22nd Street, ninth floor. The deadline to donate is Monday, Dec. 15. For more information, call (212) 777-6611.

New York Cares Annual Coat Drive

Last year, New York Cares provided warm winter coats to over 94,000 of our neighbors who might otherwise have gone without.

The need is just as important this year. You can help by contributing money, by organizing a coat drive on behalf of your company or other organization, by volunteering to help sort and bag the coats or, most basically, by donating a coat you no longer need.

In the Flatiron district, new or gently used coats may be dropped off through Dec. 31 at the Time Warner Cable store at 46A East 23rd Street, just west of Park Avenue South, or at the 13th Precinct, 230 East 21st Street. For other locations and additional information, click here.

FPWA Toy Drive

The Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies is gratefully accepting toys and donations for its annual holiday toy and gift drive. This year's drive is particularly important given the increased financial strain on New York families. This year's goal is to collect and distribute toys, clothing, books and other gifts to over 100 member agencies which will distribute them to thousands of needy New York toddlers, youth and teens. Donations can be dropped off at the FPWA office at 281 Park Avenue South at 21st Street. The drive ends on Dec. 18.

To donate, contact Karen Giacalone at kgiacalone@fpwa.org or by phone at (212) 801-1332. For more information, click here.

Citi-Habitats Toy Drive

Real estate broker Citi-Habitats is again participating in the Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots campaign at all Citi-Habitat locations, including two in the Flatiron BID. They are at 27 East 22nd Street and at 32 East 22nd Street. A drop-off box for new unwrapped toys donated by individuals or corporations will be available at those locations through Dec. 19. For more information, click here.

Donate to Housing Works

Clothing can be donated directly to the Gramercy location at 157 East 23rd Street. To contact this store, call (212) 529-5955. For free furniture pick-up and guidelines, please call (212) 366-0820. To volunteer this holiday season, and year-round, please contact Anthony Alexander at (212) 645-8111, ext. 161, or by e-mail at a.alexander@housingworks.org. For more information, please visit www.housingworks.org.

Department of Consumer Affairs

The NYC Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) is encouraging New Yorkers to shop smart this holiday season.

To make holiday shopping safe and easy, DCA offers helpful tips so you know your rights when it comes to gift cards, online purchases, refund policies and more. Please click here to view DCA's Holiday Shopping Guide.

In addition to the shopping guide, the DCA also offers information on recent toy recalls. For more information, click here.

Free Walking Tours Every Sunday

FREE WALKING TOURS
are sponsored every Sunday by the Flatiron/23rd Street Partnership.

Join our expert guides on a 90-minute journey through this vibrant neighborhood, viewing some of the City's most notable landmarks, including the New York Life Insurance building, the MetLife Tower, the Appellate Courthouse and the famous Flatiron Building.

Time:
Every Sunday at 11 a.m.

Meeting Place:
The southwest corner of Madison Square Park, at 23rd Street and Broadway, in front of the statue of William Seward.

IF YOU'RE ON THE NORTH SIDE OF WEST 28TH STREET, BETWEEN Park Avenue South and Madison Avenue, you can dine on Spanish or Chinese food, update your cell phone, buy a bottle of gin, grab coffee and a bagel from a deli or sit for a shoeshine and a haircut. And, on the very same street, you can find a violin that will set you back $5 million. The bow is extra.

On a block that is conventional in many ways, Gradoux-Matt Rare Violins, at 31-33 East 28th Street, is an anomaly, offering centuries-old romance and culture as well as craftsmanship of the highest order. The craftsman is Emmanuel Gradoux-Matt, a 47-year-old master luthier, a maker of stringed instruments.

The $5 million violin - a Stradivarius, of course - is kept just below the street-level entrance, in a windowless basement room known as "The Vault" where it shares space with some 200 other exceptional musical instruments and bows that are for sale.

In addition to dealing in rare violins, violas and cellos, Gradoux-Matt also restores them. His workshop is just inside the shop's entrance, partially visible to sidewalk strollers, making him a sort of fiddler on the ground. Ironically, the location is just east of the original Tin Pan Alley, home of the pop music industry early in the 20th century (see article below).

Gradoux-Matt moved to the Flatiron district in April after partnering with the renowned violin maker René Morel in the West 50s. When Morel went into semi-retirement, it was the signal for Gradoux-Matt to launch his own business.

He has almost 5,000 square feet of space, including an elegant auditorium that seats 70 and where most Mondays at 12:30 p.m., there are hour-long concerts called "Strad for Lunch." Young and gifted musicians play classical music on vintage instruments, a soul-soothing grace note to the urban cacophony just outside. Admission is free, although a $5 donation is suggested.

Gradoux-Matt himself was born in France, raised in Switzerland, and graduated first in his class at the Newark Violin Making School, part of Nottingham Technical College in England. He began playing the violin at age 5, but as he grew up, he found himself fascinated by how the instrument was made.

"I had two interests growing up: music and art," he said. "This was a good way to combine both. I was very much influenced by Pierre Gerber, who took care of my violin."

Eventually, he worked with Gerber, as well as in other great ateliers, including W.E. Hill & Sons in England and Jacques Français in New York.

The $5 million violin in his vault was made by Antonio Stradivari early in the 18th century, a time music historians regard as the Italian master's "golden period." There aren't many like it in the world and those that do exist belong to artists such as Itzhak Perlman and Jennifer Koh.

What makes the violin worth so much, said Gradoux-Matt, is "the rarity, the name, the authenticity and the quality."

"There is a tangible sound and a psychological sound," he said. "The combination of both makes a great violin. When the movie 'The Red Violin' was being made, we were asked to loan them a Strad, just to keep on the set."

No one played it, he said. It was there simply to "elevate the atmosphere."

Which is exactly what Gradoux-Matt does on East 28th Street.

IT'S BEEN 32 YEARS SINCE the bronze plaque was embedded into the sidewalk near the corner of West 28th Street and Broadway, a plaque commemorating the area as "Tin Pan Alley . . . where the business of the American popular song flourished during the first decades of the 20th century."

Today, that plaque is partially obscured by support for a scaffold. It is barely visible to most passersby, a faint echo of what used to be.

In the years preceding World War I, the two-block stretch of 28th Street from Fifth to Sixth Avenues was the cradle of the Great American Songbook. It resounded with the plunking of pianos pounding out some of the most memorable melodies ever written, pop tunes that became standards.

These days, the music on West 28th Street is provided by the horns of impatient automobiles, the patois of street vendors and the riffs of construction workers. Costume jewelry, T-shirts, accessories, sunglasses and perfume fill street-level stores, while sidewalk salesmen deal in more esoteric items.

Now there are issues involving developers, preservationists and tenants in some of the 19th-century brownstones between Broadway and Sixth Avenue where giants like George Gershwin and Irving Berlin and Scott Joplin hustled their songs and got their start.

One such structure is the brownstone at 45 West 28th Street, once the premises of Jerome H. Remick & Co., a noted music publisher a century ago. A faded photograph of George Gershwin remains taped inside the vestibule door with a caption stating he once worked there. It was in Tin Pan Alley in 1919 that the young Gershwin is said to have met another budding legend, lyricist Irving Caesar, and where they collaborated on "Swanee," their first hit tune.

The Tin Pan Alley plaque was dedicated on July 26, 1976 in front of a small crowd gathered around a flatbed truck holding an upright piano on which Harold Arlen, Burton Lane and Sammy Cahn played a hit parade of passages from songs they had written. By then, the music publishers were long gone, having followed the theater district uptown. The area eventually became part of a thriving flower district, but that too changed as most of the petal-pushers moved elsewhere.

How Tin Pan Alley got its name is shrouded in myth, but the most popular explanation involves one Monroe H. Rosenfeld, a song writer and newspaper columnist, and music publisher Harry von Tilzer, the composer of such ditties as "Wait 'Til the Sun Shines Nellie" and "She's Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage."

Von Tilzer (whose kid brother, Albert, composed "Take Me Out to the Ball Game") had an office at 42 West 28th Street. Rosenfeld came to visit one afternoon and asked why Harry's piano sounded muted.

Von Tilzer replied, "It's because so many pianos are being played around here, we put strips of newspaper in back of the strings to keep the sound down."

"It sounds like a tin pan," Rosenfeld said.

"Yes," said von Tilzer. "I guess this is tin pan alley."

Rosenfeld wrote a column about it, and the term was launched. There are other explanations, but this one - like many of the songs that came out of Tin Pan Alley - has, through repeated play, become a standard.

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• Time Out New York: Flatiron Walking Tour
• Gotham Gazette: The Flatiron District
• 'Strengthening Communities' Panel Held
• BID Tells Businesses: Yes You 'Can'
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The Flatiron/23rd Street Partnership Business Improvement District, formed in 2006, is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to enhance the area's reputation as one of New York's most vital and exciting neighborhoods. This is undertaken by maintaining a clean and safe environment for those who live, work and visit the area; by spearheading area improvement projects; and by marketing the diverse business and retail options in this vibrant and historic neighborhood.

For more information go to our website at www.discoverflatiron.org or email us at info@flatironbid.org.

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