July Flatiron Newsletter

in this issue

	2nd Annual Meeting: Triangles, Tributes Capture the Spotlight It's Chow Time! Celebrate Flatiron Chefs! Lois Eida: 30 Years . . . and Counting Summer Restaurant Week: Two of Them Second Stories: Institute of Culinary Education Discover Flatiron: 141 Fifth Avenue Non-Profit Profile: AIGA Flatiron Flashback: The Rocking Chair Riots Free Flatiron Walking Tours Every Sunday Newsroom Newsletter Archives

It's Chow Time! Celebrate Flatiron Chefs!

TICKETS ARE ON SALE
for Celebrate Flatiron Chefs!, the Madison Square Park Conservancy's annual outdoor food fest that features the very best from the district's restaurants.

This year's event is scheduled for the evening of Tuesday, July 15, in Madison Square Park. It begins at 6:30 p.m., with a VIP preview at 5:30 p.m. Tickets are $150 for general entry, $250 for VIP entry. Proceeds will be used for horticulture, safety, sanitation and the park's many free cultural programs.

Some 750 guests are expected to taste offerings from such Flatiron favorites as A Voce, Bar Stuzzichini, Borough Food & Drink, Country, Dos Caminos, Eleven Madison Park, Hill Country, Ilili, Lunetta, Olana, Pamplona, Punch, Rickshaw Dumpling Bar, Nuela, the Shake Shack, Tabla, 230 Fifth and guest chef Zak Pelaccio.

The event is sponsored by Food & Wine magazine, the Sapir Organization, One Madison Park, Time Out New York and Forest City Ratner Companies.

For more information and to purchase tickets click here or call (212) 538-9310.

Lois Eida: 30 Years . . . and Counting

LOIS EIDA, THE FOUNDER OF Lois Lane Travel, is celebrating her 30th year in the Flatiron district by talking trash.

"But in a nice way," she said.

Eida, a board member of the Flatiron Partnership, already sponsors two of the BID's litter receptacles, both in front of 230 Fifth Avenue, where her business is located. Now she is putting the Lois Lane logo on three more and placing them in front of each of her previous locations.

"We started the business in 1978 at 160 Fifth," she said. "Around 1992, we moved to 172 Fifth, next to Eisenberg's. Then, in 2000, we went to 200 Fifth, when it was still the Toy Building, and last year, to the lobby of 230 Fifth, at 27th Street."

We know it's a travel business, but why all the moves?

"Rising rents," said Eida. "When we started, the rent was $5 a square foot. I won't say what it is now, but it's a lot more than that."

Eida's three decades in the area have provided ample opportunity to observe change.

"In the '70s and early '80s, this was a very creative community," she said. "Lots of photographers with big studios, graphic artists, printers in huge lofts, publishers. Little of that is left now."

In time, she added, architects and ad agencies moved in, followed closely by restaurants, greengrocers and other signs of a rising prosperity.

The growth of area hotels has been crucial to her business, Eida said.

"They brought people to this district who never knew the neighborhood existed. People love it here: the convenience to the wholesale markets, the amenities, the restaurants, the park, the safety. Now we want to give back because the district has been so good to us. It isn't easy to continue a small business in this city for 30 years. Everything is mega . . . big box stores. We give personalized service and we've done it for 30 years."

For more information about sponsorship opportunities with the BID click here.

Summer Restaurant Week: Two of Them

RESERVATIONS ARE STILL being taken for one of the season's best dining deals: NYC Restaurant Week: Summer 2008. That's when more than 230 of the city's eateries will offer three-course lunches for $24.07 and three-course dinners for $35. Prices do not include beverages, taxes or tips. The dates are July 21-25 and July 28-Aug. 1.

A number of restaurants within the Flatiron district are participating in the biannual event, now in its 17th year. Among them: Aspen, Blue Smoke, Dos Caminos Park, Eleven Madison Park, Giorgio's of Gramercy, Ilili, Lunetta, Olana, Primehouse New York, Tabla and Tamarind.

For more information about Restaurant Week click here.

Second Stories: Institute of Culinary Education

"DOES IT ALWAYS SMELL this good?" asked the visitor of the woman at the reception desk as the aroma of freshly baked lemon tarts scented the air.

"Oh yes," replied the receptionist. "We're quite close to the bread and pastry classes."

The setting was 50 West 23rd Street, home of the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE), one of the nation's premier cooking schools, a facility described by Rick Smilow, its president and principal owner, as "a 42,000-square-foot campus."

ICE had its genesis in 1975 as the legendary Peter Kump's New York Cooking School on East 92nd Street. It was acquired by Smilow after Kump's death in 1995, moved to 23rd Street that year, changed its name and went through a couple of expansions. Today, it occupies five floors, employs a staff of about 100 - including 20 who do nothing but maintain its ovens, refrigerators, mixers, salamander broilers, grills and other professional-level equipment - and schools almost 24,000 students a year in its 12 kitchens.

The Institute has three primary divisions. Its Career program produces graduates who wind up in some of the country's most prestigious restaurants, bakeries and catering businesses. With separate six- to 11-month programs in Culinary Arts, Pastry & Baking, and Culinary Management, that division draws some 700 students annually. Since more than half of them work, many in entry-level positions in the food industry, ICE offers morning, afternoon and evening classes and is open seven days a week to accommodate unconventional job schedules.

ICE's Recreation program, as the name implies, is geared for amateurs. It attracts 23,000 people who sign up for the more than 1,500 "hands on" cooking, baking and wine courses each year. Classes range from one to five sessions each and subjects cover everything from "Easy Dishes for Summer Entertaining" and "Knife Skills" to such esoterica as "Medieval Persian Cooking" and "Beer Drinking for Couples."

The school also has a Corporate and Private Cooking Parties division, which combines cooking lessons with a sit-down, full-service meal for anywhere from 15 to 70 people. Corporations host parties either to entertain clients or encourage team-building; private affairs generally are for personal celebrations such as birthdays or anniversaries.

Through the years, ICE has amassed a full menu of honors, the latest of which is the International Association of Culinary Professionals' 2008 Award of Excellence.

"It's the closest thing we have to an Oscar in our industry," said Smilow, whose only professional association with food prior to his acquisition of ICE was a management stint with Nabisco. Now that he's run the school for 13 years, can he cook?

"I'm a respectable and developing cook," he said. Slight pause. "But I'm not as good as my wife."

For more information, go to www.iceculinary.com.

Discover Flatiron: 141 Fifth Avenue

FOR A LITTLE OVER A YEAR and a half, one of the oldest and loveliest buildings on lower Fifth Avenue has been wearing a mask. Sort of.

It's 141 Fifth, at the southeast corner of 21st Street, and while it is being renovated into residential condominiums after more than a century as a commercial building, it has been sheathed in a printed fabric depicting what it will look like when the curtain is removed.

When it was completed in 1897, the building was topped by a magnificent copper cupola, almost a signature touch of its architect, Robert Maynicke. Maynicke's fingerprints are all over the Flatiron district. Right after he worked on 141 Fifth, Maynicke designed the nearby Sohmer Building at 170 Fifth, also capped by a great dome. Several years later, his firm, Maynicke & Franke, created what was to be the International Toy Center at 200 Fifth Avenue.

The land on which 141 Fifth sits had been purchased in 1854 by Robert L. Cutting, a Manhattan banker who hobnobbed with folks like J. P. Morgan and Thomas Edison and whose funeral at Grace Church in 1887 was attended by the cream of New York society. Cutting had built a four-story brownstone mansion, with basement, at 141 Fifth Avenue, a showplace in its day. In 1896, nine years after his death, the property - together with an adjoining plot at 143 Fifth Avenue also occupied by a great house - was sold for $225,000. Both mansions were razed and groundbreaking commenced for a fireproof store and lofts structure that became known as the Merchant's Bank of New York Building.

Some of the original tenants were Park & Tilford, the Zabar's of its time, and the prestigious Art Lithographic Publishing Co. In addition to its 30-foot cupola, the landmarked building - part of the Ladies' Mile Historic District - is graced by a Beaux Arts terra cotta fa�ade, a rounded corner, white brick and banded columns. An arch beneath a large circular window frames the entrance. A fifth-floor balcony that had been removed in the 1950s has been restored.

The building was acquired late in 2005 by S.L. Green and Savanna Partners for a reported $60 million. Green owns the lower two floors, which will be retained for commercial use, while Savanna is developing the rest of the building into 38 condominiums, including four penthouses. One of them, a 3,200-square-foot triplex, will be contained within the cupola. Centra/Ruddy is handling the architecture and interior design and according to published accounts, the entire renovation is expected to be completed early next year.

For more information, go to www.141fifthavenue.com.

Non-Profit Profile: AIGA

THE CASUAL PASSERBY MIGHT not even give it a glance, but the four-story building at 164 Fifth Avenue is home to one of the most influential design organizations in the country. With 22,000 members and some 60 chapters, AIGA is the oldest and largest association for design professionals in the U.S., with a mission "to advance designing as a professional craft, strategic business tool and vital cultural force."

When AIGA was founded in 1914, its name was an acronym for American Institute of Graphic Arts. It was a small, exclusive organization concerned primarily with such matters as typography and "the purposeful arrangement of text and images." Today, said Steve Rogenstein, director of marketing and communications, it encompasses all facets of design "except landscaping and fashion."

Its building on Fifth Avenue, which it purchased in 1993, is known as the AIGA National Design Center. It houses not only AIGA's national headquarters, but a street-level gallery that has been showcasing exhibits of contemporary design since 1994; an archive of past design competitions, historic documents and the like, accessible to members and design scholars by appointment; a library with more than 2,000 titles, available only to members by appointment; and a "green roof" of sedum plantings that reduce heating and cooling loads on the building.

The gallery's current exhibit, "Everyday Design: Great Finds From Around the World," will be up through Aug. 15. It includes the stuff of daily life - everything from milk bottles to traffic signs - used in some 18 countries. A second exhibit, also on view through Aug. 15 is a display of Argentine iconic symbols ranging from the tango to Evita.

AIGA also works on concepts for the public good. Its Design for Democracy program - launched in 1998 to apply design principles that help people understand interactions between themselves and the government - includes a project called Get Out the Vote. Designers from all over the country are invited to submit nonpartisan posters encouraging citizens to register and vote. All posters can be seen in AIGA's online gallery and downloaded, printed and displayed. During the 2004 election campaign, more than 50,000 AIGA posters were shown in public places and made available online.

AIGA Design for Democracy has also offered ideas about clarifying voting-ballot and polling-place-information design. Last summer, its recommendations were accepted by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and in January, guidelines and samples were distributed to 6,000 election officials across the country, giving local jurisdictions the means to apply design concepts that should make voting easier and more comprehensible.

For more information, go to www.aiga.org.

Flatiron Flashback: The Rocking Chair Riots

THE SUMMER OF 1901 WAS a scorcher. For eight consecutive days, from June 26 to July 3, the temperature in Manhattan hit at least 99 degrees, the longest such stretch in the city's annals. The big heat not only made history, it precipitated one of New York's oddest "riots" and it happened in the heart of the Flatiron district.

An enterprising fellow named Oscar F. Spate had paid the city $500 for a five-year contract to install green wicker rocking chairs in several New York parks, including Madison Square Park. In return, Spate could charge the overheated a nickel for the privilege of parking themselves in one of his rockers. This did not exactly thrill most people, for whom the parks in those days of no air-conditioning offered one of the few opportunities to catch a breeze or find some shade beneath leafy boughs.

There was instant opposition from newspaper editorials, area merchants and just about everyone else. On July 6, one of Spate's men was forced to flee into the Fifth Avenue Hotel at 23rd Street, chased there by a crowd after smacking a teenage heckler. Two days later, reported The New York Times, trouble again broke out in Madison Square Park when "a number of young urchins . . . jeered at the chair attendants and hooted anyone who dared to give a nickel for the use of the private chairs." Spate's coin-collectors started to get physical with the kids, but adults in the area sprang to the boys' defense, fighting with the attendants. Soon, "a small riot was in progress." Extra police were called and instructed not to bother nonpayers unless there was a breach of the peace. Before order was restored, a crowd around the Worth Monument numbered 1,500. On July 10, Spate's permit was revoked.

Interestingly, Mayor Robert A. Van Wyck - New York's first mayor after consolidation of the city in 1898 and the man for whom the Van Wyck Expressway was named - was furious when he learned there were only 11,000 free benches in all Manhattan parks. "There ought to be 50,000," he thundered to the Board of Estimate. He had little time to carry out that mission. Four months after the "rocking chair riot," Van Wyck, a scandal-ridden Tammany Hall politician whose campaign slogan was "To Hell With Reform," was defeated in his bid for reelection.

Free Flatiron 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.

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