Samuel Sullivan “Sunset” Cox (1824–1889) was born in Zanesville, Ohio, and served his home state as a Democratic Congressional representative from 1857 to 1865 before being unseated. After moving to New York in 1866, Cox served again in Congress for several terms from 1869 until 1889.
Although Cox once publicly declared that his most satisfying contribution to public service was championing the Life Saving Service—founded in the 1840s to patrol the coasts and save imperiled boaters during bad weather, the group was absorbed into the Coast Guard in 1915—this statue is sponsored by U.S. Postal Service workers because of Cox’s support for their quality-of-life issues. Known as the “letter-carriers’ friend,” Cox spearheaded legislation that led to paid benefits and a 40-hour workweek for postal employees. Mail carriers from the 188 cities named on the monument contributed $10,000 for the statue in a campaign that began soon after Cox’s death.
Sculptor Louise Lawson’s statue of Cox, unveiled in 1891, depicts him orating before Congress. Lawson (186?–1899) came from a prominent Ohio family. She and her brother, U.S. Representative W. D. Lawson, both attended Cox’s 1889 funeral at which President Grover Cleveland and General William Sherman served as honorary pallbearers. One might interpret the statue’s somewhat stiff quality as representative of Cox’s steadfast stance on issues for which he advocated.
Jack Kerouac wandering along East 7th street after visiting Burroughs at our pad, passing statue of Congressman Samuel "Sunset" Cox, "The Letter – Carrier's Friend" in Tompkins Square toward corner of Avenue A, Lower East Side; he's making a Dostoyevsky mad-face or Russian basso be-bop Om, first walking around the neighborhood, then involved with The Subterraneans, pencils & notebook in wool shirt-pockets, Fall 1953, Manhattan.
Tomorrow (11/14) at 12:30 pm, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP), City Councilmember Rosie Mendez, State Senator Brad Hoylman, and local community leaders and affordable housing advocates will gather at the corner of 12th Street and University Place, across from Bowlmor Lanes, to call upon the Mayor and the city to finally move ahead with proposed zoning protections for this area prohibiting high-rise towers and encouraging the creation of affordable housing.
Demolition has just begun on Bowlmor Lanes, which is to be replaced with a 300 ft. tall luxury condo tower with no affordable housing. GVSHP has proposed a rezoning of the area which would limit the height of new construction and encourage developers to include affordable housing.
For almost a year GVSHP, local elected officials, and community leaders have tried to convince the Mayor and the city to move ahead with the plan. So far, they have refused.
Co-owner Amy Miceli says that the decision to add evening hours with home-cooked meals was based on a desire to fill the void left in the community’s changing restaurant landscape.
“We miss Old Devil Moon and Back 40, places to enjoy a quiet drink and a casual, calm meal with friends; not breaking the bank, not crowded out by folks yapping into their cell phones.
Our regulars miss those places too so we are making the food we like to eat, serving it with the wines we like to drink, in an atmosphere we would like to relax in.”
“We are excited to control four buildings on a prime corner of Avenue A and 12th Street in the East Village,” Daniel Wrublin, a principal at Dalan, said in a prepared statement. “The properties are in good condition, but we have substantial improvements planned to take them to the next level.”
WHAT: New Yorker's are used to seeing rodents in the subway but commuters may see a few that are too big to ignore on their commute to work tomorrow morning.
WHO: The event is being sponsored by earthkind®, a North Dakota-based pest prevention company and the makers of the award-winning Stay Away® Rodent repellent that’s proven to keep rodents out of indoor areas, safely and naturally.
WHERE: Giant mice will be greeting commuters at the E. 86th Street and W. 72nd Street subway stations before heading down to Pizza Rat’s home base at the First Avenue L station for an authentic NYC lunch of, you guessed it, pizza! Free samples of Stay Away Rodent® will be given to the first 5000 riders who greet the mice and give them a warm, NYC welcome!
WHEN: Thursday, November 12th from 7:30 am to 1:30 pm
WHY: The earthkind® mice are on a mission to teach New Yorkers how to keep “pizza rat” and other uninvited guests[ED NOTE: Family members?]out of NYC hi-rises, brownstones and homes without using poisons.
Name: Willie Correa
Occupation: Artist, Sound Engineer
Location: East 3rd Street between 1st Avenue and Avenue A
Time: 2:45 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 9
I basically had a long history here, but I’ll just give you a quick rundown. I got to the Lower East Side very young — in 1954. I was 2 years old. I grew up and I’ve seen the neighborhood transition. Imagine Avenue C back in the late 1950s. It was still a lot of Jewish stores and stuff like that.
There was a mixture always of different ethnicities. There were the Ukrainians, the Jews, the Italians. My older brother lived kind of through a "West Side Story" thing. He got stabbed. He was going out with an Italian girl. Just like the movie; just like the play. I’ve seen all that. It still has that mixture, but the gentrification has taken it to an extreme.
I was one of the founding directors of the Nuyorican Poets Café, but I’m no longer on the board or stuff like that. I got involved because I’m an artist. [The different arts] at the time all kind of ping ponged off each other. They vibrated off each other and went in their own directions, but it was a mix. I was a sound engineer. That’s why Miguel got me into the café because we needed to hear the poets. Back then in 1974 the audio systems were very poor until I started for them. We started doing broadcasts on WBAI live.
I found the building on East Third Street for them. The structure actually belonged to La MaMa, and [founder Ellen Stewart] basically turned it over to us because we didn’t have enough room at the time.
The neighborhood was going down the tubes. It was a small little bar and we needed the to accommodate all of the interests. So we went back into the neighborhood, took the building, but it took us a long time to come back to the level where we were on Sixth Street, because the neighborhood was diving. It was drug infested. We got a little grant to renovate the building through the city. It was terrible. They messed up the building.
Now I’m working with Taller Boricua in the Barrio, but I still live in the neighborhood. I do their content management. They’ve been around for 40 years and I actually connected with them through the Nuyorican. It’s in the Julia De Burgos Cultural Center on 106th Street. I’m also shooting their work now. They’ve got 40 years of original prints, which nobody can afford, so we’re doing a whole series to make affordable versions.
I’ll tell you one thing — you know the new building that they’re putting up on Avenue A? The Wall Street kids need a place to live and stuff like that, which is cool, but I go by yesterday and you see the sign they’ve got now? It’s this female and she looks like a beached whale. Give me a break. How low can you go? I’m not a woman but it’s low, man.
More than 300 complaints relating to homeless people were recorded this year through October in the 10009 and 10002 zip codes — which covers the bulk of the East Village and Lower East Side — a jump from the 171 calls recorded last year overall…
