AN INNOVATIVE PROGRAM THAT WILL ALLOW new-economy companies such as new-media businesses, software developers and biotech firms to reduce their borrowing rates on loans for equipment and real estate will be the subject of an information session organized by the Flatiron/23rd Street Partnership as part of its "Intersections" community events programming.

The session will be held at Tekserve, 119 West 23rd Street, on March 1 from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. It is expected to be particularly relevant to those involved in bioscience, technology and new media. New media includes such enterprises as designing and developing digital communications and networking programs, software programs, multimedia, websites and computer games.

The loan program is called NIMBLE and is being offered through the City's Capital Resource Corporation. Through the use of tax-exempt bonds for small and mid-size firms, it provides lower borrowing rates to companies that make or create "intangible products" on loans for capital expenditures in connection with things like patents, copyrights, formulas, processes and designs.

The event will begin with networking and a brief presentation by Tekserve's Business Solutions Group which offers a suite of Help Desk and Professional Services that support small businesses -- followed by a description of the NIMBLE program by the New York City Economic Development Corporation.

Complimentary coffee and desserts will be provided by Birch Coffee.

To register, click here.

MORE THAN 92 PERCENT OF respondents to the BID's third annual community survey either "approve" or "strongly approve" of the job being done by the Flatiron/23rd Street Partnership.

That's one of the highlights of the 2009 Community Survey, which was available to BID members and others from November 1, 2009, to January 15, either by e-mail or through a link on the BID's website. The Partnership extends its thanks to all 489 respondents because the information gleaned from the survey provides a valuable picture of BID performance to date as well as a guide to future needs and priorities.

Other survey highlights:

• For the second year in a row, respondents rated the Public Safety, Clean Streets and Streetscapes/Public Improvement programs as "very important," the highest-possible ranking. More than 75 percent of respondents want the Streetscape and Beautification program (trees and tree pits, hanging flower baskets, bike racks and plantings) extended beyond 23rd Street, Park Avenue South and the Public Plazas.
• The Clean Streets program was deemed "good" or "excellent" by 94 percent of respondents, up from 90 percent in 2008. The Public Safety program also came in for kudos, with 85 percent of respondents rating the district as safe or safer than it was a year ago, up from 75 percent in 2008.
• The BID's marketing and communications program continues to be rated "good" or "excellent."
• In their first full year of operation, the Public Plazas got nods of approval from 91 percent of respondents, up from last year's 84 percent.
• The survey also cited Dining and Shopping as the biggest reasons to visit the district. Asked what other services or retail options they would like to see offered in the neighborhood, 23 percent of respondents said "a large grocery or supermarket," followed by 13 percent who listed "mid-to-moderately priced restaurants, diners and coffee shops."

Please click here to download the 2009 BID Survey Summary Report.

PAUL SCHLADER AND JEREMY Lyman, the owners of Birch Coffee, are cultivating some seriously younger customers these days, some as young as 18 months. Every Friday morning at 10 a.m., it's story time at Birch. Children are escorted to the second-floor swap library, plunked into kid-size chairs and read to for about 30 minutes by a rotating group of narrators. Young'uns whose attention wanders often do a little wandering themselves, often toddling over to the red-curtained window overlooking the Gershwin Hotel lobby and taking in the sights. In addition to nourishing the soul, Birch also makes sure the kids' bellies are fed. Following one recent reading, freshly made applesauce was served. The town's littlest literati gobbled it up.

(Birch Coffee, 7 East 27th Street. Phone: 212-686-1444. Website: www.birchcoffee.com.)

TAX TIME IS FAST
approaching, and once again Baruch College is ready to help those who need assistance in preparing their 2009 federal and New York State returns. The service is free.

Beginning on Thursday, February 4, and continuing right through April 15, Baruch students will be on hand to help prepare tax returns for New York City residents on a walk-in basis, first-come first-served. Baruch is one of the nation's premier business schools and all volunteer students are certified by the Internal Revenue Service as tax preparers as part of the college's Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program (VITA).

All VITA 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.

They will be in the Atrium of Baruch's Library and Technology building, 151 East 25th Street, from Tuesdays through Thursdays from noon to 8 p.m.; on Fridays from noon to 7 p.m.; and on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The service will be closed on Lincolns Birthday, Friday, February 12.

For additional information, volunteers may be contacted by e-mail at BaruchVITA@gmail.com.

RESTAURANT WEEK WINTER 2010 has been extended through February 28, with a blackout date on February 14, for several restaurants, including these favorites in the Flatiron district: A Voce (lunch only), Allegretti, Bar Stuzzichini, Giorgio's of Gramercy, Hill Country, ilili, Olana, Pranna, SD26 Restaurant (lunch only) 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. Saturdays are excluded for all restaurants, and Sundays for a few.

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.

A monthly roundup of exhibits and events at the art galleries and museums within the Flatiron district. To be considered for inclusion, please e-mail relevant information to Eric Zaretsky, Director of Marketing, at ezaretsky@flatironbid.org.

The Mishkin Gallery:
Ansel Adams Masterworks

Ansel Adams, whose majestic black-and-white images of the American West made him one of country's best-known photographers, will be the subject of the first show of 2010 at the Sidney Mishkin Gallery at Baruch College.

A selection of 47 photographs, all from "The Museum Set" -- a group Adams put together not long before his death in 1984 -- will be on display at the gallery from February 11 until March 9. An opening reception is scheduled for February 10 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

"The Museum Set" represents what Adams considered an overview of his best work.

Adams was originally trained as a concert pianist, but in 1928, at the age of 30, he decided that photography was his true calling. Two years later, he joined Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham in forming f/64, a short-lived but influential group that helped establish photography as a legitimate art form.

In a career that lasted more than half a century, Adams became not only a master photographer, but a critic, teacher and publisher of portfolios. He was a founder of the photography department at New York's Museum of Modern Art. His pictures have been published in more than 35 books and portfolios and hung in hundreds of exhibitions. In 1980, he received the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

All the photographs to be shown at the Mishkin Gallery are from the collection of the Turtle Bay Exploration Center, Redding, Calif.

The Mishkin Gallery is at 135 East 22nd Street and is open from noon to 5 p.m., Mondays to Fridays, and until 7 p.m. on Thursdays. For more information, click here.

Museum of Sex

"Rubbers: The Life, History & Struggle of the Condom," a multi-media look at how the condom has influenced everything from science to religion while becoming a symbol of promiscuity to some, responsibility to others. The exhibition was put together in partnership with Trojan Brand Condoms.

Dates: February 4 through next six months.
Address: 233 Fifth Avenue.
Hours: Sundays through Fridays, 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.; Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

AIGA National Design Center

"50 Books/50 Covers of 2008," a display of the best-designed books and covers of the year, a project in which the American Institute of Graphic Arts has been engaged since 1923.

"John Rombola: Eclectic Eccentric," works by an illustrator whose whimsical drawings frequently appeared in magazines such as Life, Holiday and Town & Country. The exhibit coincides with the publication of the first comprehensive monograph of Rombola's work, available for purchase at the gallery.

Dates: Both exhibitions, now through February 19.
Address: 164 Fifth Avenue.
Hours: Mondays through Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Fridays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

MANHATTAN'S PHYSICIAN Group, a multi-specialty healthcare provider that offers a wide range of services, has moved one of its eight borough facilities to the Flatiron district. The branch that had been at 324 East 23rd Street is now operating in greatly expanded space at 21 East 22nd Street, just east of Broadway. There are 19 doctors currently on call, with approximately 10 of them at the facility each day. They include primary care physicians, as well as an integrated network of specialists in such disciplines as women's and children's wellness, general surgery, nutrition, geriatric medicine, pain management and diagnostic radiology.

The facility is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Mondays through Thursdays, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Fridays, and from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturdays.

An Express Medical Service is available to handle such matters as sore throats, ear infections, cuts, bumps, bruises, headaches, rashes and minor pediatric and gynecological problems. That service is available from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Mondays through Fridays. No appointment is necessary.

For additional information, click on www.mpgcares.com or call (212) 460-7800.

FROM HIS PERCH 20 FEET ABOVE THE SIDEWALK AT THE CORNER of Sixth Avenue and 23rd Street, William Shakespeare stares impassively at the multitudes below. The Bard is unnoticed by all but a few, but once upon a time, this corner was his turf. His bust is mounted on the Sixth Avenue façade of the Caroline, an apartment building that now occupies the site of Booth's Theatre, once the most important venue in New York City for the production of Shakespeare's plays and, for a time, the best-known playhouse in the Flatiron district.

That time was the late 1800s, when West 23rd Street was the heart of Manhattan's thriving theatre and entertainment district, and Booth's, which opened on February 3, 1869, with a production of "Romeo and Juliet," was hailed by The New York Times as "the pride of the City, the resort of the educated, a school of art, a refined recreation and a benign contrast to the perverted amusements which have too long degraded the public taste."

Booth's was just one of many choices in the Flatiron's culture cluster. There was the Madison Square Theatre, at 24th Street and Fifth Avenue with its drop curtain from Tiffany's and a ventilation system that blew air over cakes of ice, making it the world's first air-conditioned theatre. The New Fifth Avenue Theatre at 28th and Broadway was noted for its productions of Gilbert and Sullivan operas. Vaudeville and a beer garden characterized Koster & Bial's mini-empire on Sixth Avenue between 23rd and 24th Streets. One of the Koster & Bial buildings, an 1886 red-brick structure, remains at the corner of Sixth and 24th, the names of the theatrical producers still prominent on its pediment beneath the words "The Corner."

In the late 1870s, on the east side of Madison Square Park, Gilmore's Garden, the precursor to Madison Square Garden, was presenting summer concerts. A couple of blocks away, where the Met Life Building now stands, the Lyceum Theatre -- under the personal supervision of Thomas Edison -- became the first playhouse to be lighted entirely by electricity. And on 23rd, just steps away from Booth's, where thespians waxed poetic over Shakespeare, was the Eden Musée, whose proprietors, influenced by London's Madame Toussaud, were presenting the poetry of wax.

Largely because of the man who built it, it was Booth's that seemed to attract the most public attention. Edwin Booth was matinee idol material, described by The Cambridge Guide to American Theatre as "the finest American tragedian of his time." He was also the older brother of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln.

In 1863, two years before that tragic event, Edwin had become the manager and lessee of the Winter Garden Theatre on lower Broadway, shifting it from burlesque and musicals to classical drama. For the next few years, he staged Shakespeare there, but on a Saturday morning in March 1867, fire destroyed the Winter Garden. Booth, who lived at 16 Gramercy Park South -- now the Players Club -- set his sights on 23rd Street.

He built a theatre at the southeast corner of Sixth Avenue at an unprecedented cost of $1.5 million. It was designed by architect James Renwick Jr., whose works include St. Patrick's Cathedral and the Smithsonian Institution, and it was considered the finest theatre in the land. Built of granite in an ornate Second Empire style, it incorporated a forced-air heating and cooling system, hydraulic ramps that raised vertically moving platforms to enhance scenery changes, and a device that allowed the house gaslights to be extinguished or lighted simultaneously during performances. It seated almost 1,800, with standing room for another 300, and boasted seven entrances on 23rd Street and another on Sixth Avenue.

Demand for the Booth's opening-night was so intense, an auction was held and tickets were limited to four per customer. "Prices obtained for some of the boxes and orchestra chairs were remarkable and have seldom been equaled in this city," reported The Times. The best box went for $125, while orchestra seats ranged from $3 to $25.50, and balcony chairs from $1 to $8.

Despite the hoopla and the quality of the productions, Booth was able to keep his theatre going for only five years. Poor management forced him into bankruptcy during the nationwide financial panic of 1874. Others took over until 1883, when the building was razed to make way for a McCreery's department store that eventually became a parking lot and then the Caroline. Ironically, the Booth's last production, like its first, was "Romeo and Juliet." The star was the patriarch of another distinguished family of the American theatre. He was born Herbert Arthur Chamberlayne Blyth, but became better known as Maurice Barrymore.

• Flatiron BID holding talk on safety, security in community
• The business of the Flatiron
• Flatiron BID honors Baruch as 'Partner of the Year'
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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 Web site at www.discoverflatiron.org or e-mail us at info@flatironbid.org.

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