THE FLATIRON/23RD STREET PARTNERSHIP WILL BE LAUNCHING
its 2009 Sponsorship Program this month. The BID's sponsorship program solicits funds from corporations, universal brands, local restaurants and retailers to help facilitate the implementation of neighborhood improvement and marketing projects.

As a sponsor, participants receive brand recognition and logo placement visible throughout the Flatiron district and the City, on items not available to the general public and made possible only by participation with the BID.

As in years past, sponsorship packages will be available, along with several new items and opportunities. Below is a list of the sponsorship opportunities for 2009.

• Co-branded Trash Receptacles
• Co-branded Ash Urns
• Streetlamp Banners
• Flatiron/23rd Street Partnership - Discover Flatiron Map
• Flatiron/23rd Street Partnership - Neighborhood Guides
• Districtwide Public Improvement Projects
• Adopt-a-Block Sponsorship Packages
• Friends of the Flatiron/23rd Street Partnership

For more information or to receive the 2009 Sponsorship Program Catalog, please contact Eric Zaretsky, Director of Marketing, at (212) 741-2323 or via e-mail at ezaretsky@flatironbid.org.

THE FLATIRON PARTNERSHIP IS KICKING OFF "INTERSECTIONS,"
its 2009 series of free programs this month aimed at generating an exchange of ideas and information about matters affecting the district.

The first event is called "Rolling With the Punches: Small Business Survival for 2009" and has been scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 25, at Baruch College's Newman Conference Center on the seventh floor of the Library and Technology Building, 151 East 25th Street.

The program, co-sponsored by the Flatiron Partnership, Baruch and TD Bank, will deal with the problems faced by small businesses during the current economic climate and will offer ideas about solving them.

"Rolling With the Punches" will get under way at 8 a.m. with registration and a complimentary networking breakfast, including a welcome from Dr. Kathleen Waldron, President of Baruch followed by a panel discussion and breakout sessions.

Also slated to participate are John A. Elliot, Dean of the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College; Annika Pergament, Anchor of the FORTUNE Business Report on NY1 News; Joel L. Naroff, Chief Economist at TD Bank; representatives from the New York City Department of Small Business Services Business Solutions Center; and several expert faculty members from Baruch's Lawrence N. Field Center for Entrepreneurship and the Baruch Small Business Development Center.

Further information will be released shortly. News of subsequent "Intersections" events will be announced as details develop.

To view the invitation, click here. To RSVP, call (212) 741-2323 or e-mail events@flatironbid.org.

FOR THE SECOND YEAR in a row, community members have given the BID two thumbs up for its impact on the district. Asked how they feel about the Partnership's performance, 93.5 percent of respondents to the 2008 Community Survey said they either "approve" or "strongly approve."

This year's survey, which was distributed to street level businesses and made available through a link on the BID's Website, drew over 600 respondents, a notable increase over the previous year's responses.

The information gathered will help the BID evaluate its work so far and inform needs and priorities for the future. This year's survey was more extensive than the first one, a reflection of programs the BID either established or expanded in 2008.

Respondents were eligible to win one of five $50 gift certificates to a Flatiron restaurant. The BID wants to thank all respondents, as well as Planet Thailand 212, Hill Country and BR Guest Restaurants for donating the gift certificates.

Here are some highlights of the survey:

• Public Safety, Clean Streets and Streetscape/Public Improvements were ranked highest among the BID's programs.
• In the 2007 survey, 52 percent of respondents rated the Public Safety Program as good or excellent and 72 percent rated the Clean Streets program as good or excellent. In 2008, those numbers increased to 78 and 90 percent, respectively.
• The new public plazas at the intersection of 23rd Street, Broadway and Fifth Avenue, a new addition to the district by the NYC Department of Transportation, have been a major success. Asked whether they like or dislike them, respondents gave the plazas an 84 percent approval rating.
• Some form of art, culture or entertainment ranked first among amenities, events or services respondents would like to see in the plazas. Food-related services followed. Shopping or other retail opportunities were also mentioned.
• In a wide range of BID marketing and communication tools, the newsletter and map were the best known and most popular.

To view the 2008 BID Survey Summary Report, click here.

WHENEVER MATAR NDIAYE gets homesick and wants to touch base with someone from his home town in Senegal, he does not have very far to go.

Ndiaye not only shares an apartment with fellow countryman Ousmane Sarr but both men are original members of the BID's Clean Team and continue to work together. They live on East 117th Street in an area once known as Spanish Harlem, but now home to many people from West Africa.

Like Sarr (who was profiled in the October 2008 BID newsletter), Ndiaye comes from the region of Louga in northwest Senegal, primarily an area of pastoral nomads and sedentary farmers. Neither occupation held much promise for Ndiaye, who worked in a clothing store before heading for the United States in 1981, the same year Sarr arrived here.

Ndiaye was born in 1960, the same year the Republic of Senegal reached full independence from France. He initially made his living here by doing what many Senegalese immigrants do when they land in New York: he sold wallets and scarves and other accessories on the sidewalks of the financial district.

He's been back to Senegal twice and when you ask him what he misses most about home, he does not hesitate.

"My family," he says. "I miss my wife and my children. I have three sons and a daughter."

Ask what else he misses and he gazes around at the urban landscape and says, with a rueful smile, "Being in the country. I like country life."

Mishkin Gallery: The Long Night and the New Day

Benton Spruance, who was an internationally known pioneer in color lithography, is the subject of a new retrospective at the Sidney Mishkin Gallery at Baruch College. "The Long Night and the New Day" is composed of 38 lithographs and one pastel. It puts a spotlight on Spruance's Social Realist work of the 1930s and his exploration of political issues during the 1940s, including World War II and its aftermath.

Spruance, who died in 1967, was well known in the middle of the last century, when he was called "the dean of Philadelphia lithography," but he's been largely overlooked since then because of the attention to abstract art. The Mishkin show includes images alluding to such subjects as the impact of war on the psyche, the dehumanizing effects of McCarthyism and the strains of postwar life in urban America.

An opening reception will be held on Feb. 5, and will feature a talk by Spruance collector Sigmund R. Balka. The show will be on view from Feb. 6 to March 4. The Sidney Mishkin Gallery is at 135 East 22nd Street. Hours are noon to 5 p.m. on Mondays through Fridays, and noon to 7 p.m. on Thursdays. For more information, click here.

Free Tax Assistance at Baruch

With tax time just around the corner -- April 15 looms closer than you think -- Baruch College is once again pitching in to provide free assistance to anyone who needs help preparing federal and New York State returns.

Baruch, one of the nation's premier business schools, is making more than 320 students available to help file returns. All of them have been tested and certified by the Internal Revenue Service as tax preparers and all are part of Baruch's Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program (VITA).

All volunteers are qualified to complete federal forms 1040, 1040A and 1040EZ and New York City and State forms IT 150 and IT 201 as well as all accompanying schedules.

This is the 18th year that Baruch students, primarily accounting and finance majors, have provided this service. It is free and no appointments are necessary. Tax preparers will handle people on a first-come, first-served basis and will be available four days a week from Friday, Feb. 6, through Wednesday, April 15, on the first floor of 151 East 25th Street, Baruch's Library and Technology Building. The hours of operation are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and noon to 7 p.m. on Fridays.

For additional information, call the VITA Tax Help Line at (646) 312-4600 or click here.

NYC Restaurant Week Extended

Restaurant Week Winter 2009 has been extended through the month of February for several restaurants, including these favorites in the Flatiron district: A Voce (lunch only), Aspen, Bar Stuzzichini, Country, Dos Caminos, Giorgio's of Gramercy, Ilili, Olana, Primehouse NY and Tamarind (lunch only). Three-course prix-fixe lunches for $24.07 and three-course prix-fixe dinners for $35 will be offered. Beverage, tax and tip are not included.

Some restaurants will extend this promotion longer than others, so please contact the individual restaurant for reservations and to confirm details. 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.

THE LANDMARKED 12-STORY BUILDING THAT BORDERS THE NORTH side of Madison Square Park and extends along Fifth Avenue from 26th to 27th Streets has been reborn.

Previously known as the Gift Building, its newest incarnation is a luxury condominium called the Grand Madison and its presence completes an arc that began in the latter half of the 19th century, when the area around Madison Square was the center of social life in New York City and a favorite destination for visitors from abroad.

Back then, the site on which the Grand Madison stands held the home of Manhattan's leading practitioner of homeopathic medicine, a man named John Franklin Gray. Dr. Gray had as neighbors some of the town's leading citizens: Wall Street bankers such as Frank Work; the Schieffelin family of the drug house W.H. Schieffelin & Co.; Benjamin H. Field, an incorporator of the American Museum of Natural History; and the Iselin family, pillars of New York society. They lived in brownstones that stretched east along 26th Street from Fifth Avenue to Madison Avenue, facing the park, and north along Fifth Avenue to 27th Street.

Dr. Gray eventually moved away and in 1871, his house was replaced by a much larger edifice designed by a portly fellow named Henry Hobson Richardson. It was called the Brunswick and was one of several residential hotels that sprang up around Madison Square, most notably the Fifth Avenue Hotel, the Albemarle and Hoffman House.

The Brunswick Hotel was particularly popular with visitors from England as well as wealthy young men about town. It was across the street from Delmonico's restaurant, but boasted six public dining rooms of its own, including a ladies' restaurant and a ladies' breakfast room. A prix fixe "bird-and-bottle" dinner was $1.50.

The hotel was also the headquarters of the New York Coaching Club, an organization of extremely affluent men whose hobby was driving four-in-hand coaches. (For more on the Coaching Club, see Flatiron Flashback, this newsletter.)

The Brunswick closed in 1896 and on Dec. 29, 1899, The New York Times reported that a new hotel on that site might soon be built. An unidentified "capitalist" was quoted as saying: "There is no better locality in New York for a hotel than in the immediate vicinity of Madison Square . . . To show how property in that section has increased in value, I can say that we are ready to pay $75,000 for one parcel that was sold in 1873 for $14,000."

The building that replaced the Brunswick Hotel was completed in 1907. It was called the Brunswick Building, and for a while it also operated as a hotel, then as a warehouse. Midway through the 20th century, it became the home of showrooms for some 150 companies that sold giftware, china, flatware, home textiles, stationery and Christmas ornaments. Its formal address was 225 Fifth Avenue, but for some 50 years, it was colloquially known as The Gift Building.

Made of red brick and limestone in a style called Renaissance Revival, the building was designed by architects Francis H. Kimball and Harry E. Donnell. With its intricate cartouches and stately balconies, it was designated a landmark by the New York Landmarks Commission in 2001 as part of a 10-block area in the Madison Square North Historic District.

In 2004, it was sold to the real estate developer Elad Properties by Green Stamp America, which had owned it for 15 years. After extensive interior renovations, its life as the Gift Building ended and when the wrappings came off, the Grand Madison emerged. The century-old structure began a new life, this time as an elegant residence with 194 condominium apartments, including penthouses overlooking Madison Square Park.

David McNeill, co-president of the Grand Madison board, and his wife, Anne-Marie Francis, were the first people to move in, on Nov. 30, 2006.

"The neighborhood is great and getting better every day," McNeill said. "There are additional residential buildings coming on line, making it a very viable neighborhood. It's centrally located, with great restaurants and, with the renovation of 200 Fifth, increasing office space. In short, I would not want to live anywhere else."

WHEN A NEW YORKER BY THE NAME OF WILLIAM JAY DIED IN 1915, The New York Times reported that he was a direct descendent of John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States, that he came from a family that had been a significant influence in the city for more than two centuries, and that he was a splendid horseman, an exceptional polo player and the president of a hunt club when riding to hounds was popular.

"But by far," said the Times, "the most notable of his sporting activities was the founding of the New York Coaching Club, the pioneer coaching organization in this country, and one of the greatest influences in the evolution of four-in-hand driving."

Coaching became popular as a recreation or amusement around 1868, in England. The four-in-hand version called for special skills because the "whip," or driver, held the reins of all four horses in one fist. According to The New International Encyclopaedia, it required "coolness, judgment and a knowledge of horses."

The New York Coaching Club, born in 1875 in the heart of Madison Square -- then the city's center of fashionable society -- not only contributed to the breeding of harness horses in the U.S., but dazzled the metropolis with its periodic parades, starting at the northern edge of Madison Square Park and tooling up Fifth Avenue and onto the new carriage drives in Central Park. Thousands of onlookers lined the streets, gaping at the well-heeled and formally dressed whips as they guided their prancing horses over the cobblestones while the blast of a traditional coaching horn cleared the road ahead.

The Coaching Club was headquartered in the Brunswick Hotel, at Fifth Avenue and 26th Street. (For more about the hotel, see the Discover Flatiron item in this newsletter.) Its mission was to establish standards of excellence in style and technique that emulated those in England. It is probably no coincidence that the Brunswick was enormously popular with visiting Brits.

Beginning in 1876, the club staged semi-annual parades that would go as far north as Pelham (now part of the Bronx) and New Rochelle, and sometimes east to Long Island. On the way back, the coaches would rumble down to Washington Square and wheel around the fountain before heading back to the Brunswick, where club members would take their dinner. Songs such as "Coaching to Pelham" became popular (Jump on board now, one and all/Take the coach for Pelham/Hark! The bugler sounds the call/"All aboard for Pelham"/Goodbye Brunswick, Here we go/Rocking on to Pelham/Up and down, and to and fro/On the coach for Pelham).

Although this was clearly not a poor man's activity, those who could scrape together an extra couple of dollars could purchase passage in one of the coaches and also enjoy a lengthy stop in the country, including a picnic lunch. Reservations were placed weeks in advance. Some of the town's more pompous citizens almost became ill at the thought of the proletariat riding in these elegant carriages whose aristocratic owners were, in effect, acting as chauffeurs. But the charismatic De Lancey Astor Kane, one of the club's founders, pointed out that in England, the very titled Marquis of Blandford, heir to the Duke of Marlborough, had driven his coach as a public conveyance between London and Dorking - so there!

Kane's four-in-hand, one of the original Coaching Club vehicles, was called the Tally-ho. Canary yellow with black trim, it was so distinctive that from then on any coach-and-four was called a "tally-ho" by the general public. Kane's Tally-ho was donated to the Museum of the City of New York in 1933. It remained there until last summer, when it was transferred to the Long Island Museum of Art, History and Carriages in Stony Brook, N.Y.

The Coaching Club still exists, promoting coaching and sponsoring special events, but the introduction of Henry Ford's Model T in 1908 all but put an end to its traditional New York parades. Two years later, the club sounded the horn for its final Fifth Avenue pageant and its elegant carriages and well-disciplined horses set forth for a final triumphal march on their way to becoming a quaint memento of the city's Gilded Age.

• AM New York: Flatiron's Fanciful Flight
• Flatiron BID Promotes Neighborhood for Holidays
• Mayor Officially Opens the Plaza
• Mayor Bloomberg and DOT Commissioner Sadik-Khan Unveil New Public Space at Madison Square
• Pedestrian Plazas Already an Attraction
• Time Out New York: Flatiron Walking Tour
• Gotham Gazette: The Flatiron District
• 'Strengthening Communities' Panel Held
• BID Tells Businesses: Yes You 'Can'
• Click Here For More News Articles

Newsletters

• January 2009
• December 2008
• November 2008
• October 2008
• September 2008
• August 2008
• July 2008
• June 2008
• May 2008
• Click Here for More Newsletters

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.

Contact Information: