“From coastal resiliency and sustainable green practices to the preservation of affordable housing, world-class public art, and vibrant, year-round programming in award-winning public spaces, Battery Park City leads the way in many of the measures that makes cities livable."

Raju Mann

President & CEO
  • 01/07
  • Community

Newsletter – January 2016

In the News

Chess Tournament

BPC Parks Programming held its inaugural Chess Tournament this past month, which welcomed a stellar crowd of 26 young participants. Fun and friendly competition filled the room at 6 River Terrace as young novices showed off their skills in the classic game of strategy. Under the guidance of Chess Coach Michah Saperstein and BPC Parks Programming staff, participants enjoyed several rounds of Chess matches, as parents looked on proudly. The event is one of several new activities included in the expanded Parks Programming portfolio as BPC Parks continues to build on the numerous activities available to the public of all ages throughout the year. Stay tuned for dates of our next Chess Tournament and other engaging activities on BPC Parks Twitter feed @bpcparks.

Recycle your Tree

Recycle your Tree

As the Holidays wind down, the BPC Parks invites you to help contribute to the sustainable management of the parks that make Battery Park City such an amazing place. Please bring your “naked” tree to your street corner where BPC Parks staff will pick them up daily. Trees will then be taken to Esplanade Plaza to be fed through the chipper and the chips will be used in our composting operation.

Recycling your tree is a great way to help your community by reducing waste, lowering carbon emissions and helping to keep the plants healthy. You can read more about our sustainable composting practices here.

WHEN: Now through January 26, 2016
WHAT TO BRING: Any size home Christmas tree — all decorations and lights removed. Please remove any mounting or stand.

BPC People – Mashi Blech

Mashi Blech

BPC Resident, Director of ArchCare TimeBank,
Member and Organizer of the BPC TimeBank Hub
Favorite Battery Park City Spot: Rockefeller Park

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Mashi Blech has always had a passion for helping others. During her studies at CUNY, she worked as a recreation therapist and later earned a Master’s degree in Therapeutic Recreation at New York University. Soon after graduation, Mashi found another opportunity to engage others and service the public when she was introduced to the idea of timebanking. Mashi’s involvement with TimeBanks came after she saw an ad in the NY Times for a TimeBanking grant. She went in for an interview and the rest is history. TimeBanking is a free reciprocal exchange network in which people provide their skills and services to one another by using time instead of money as the currency. With over 28 years of experience, Mashi created one of the earliest and most successful TimeBank models and currently works for the ArchCare TimeBank. In 2009, she decided to launch a TimeBank hub in Battery Park City, the community in which she had lived since 1984. Initially, she started the program with people she knew. Through word of mouth, the program grew to 50 members in BPC in addition to the 400 members who live in Lower Manhattan. Archcare Timebank currently supports 1,100 members.

The TimeBank is managed using a database where members’ services are listed. Among the many services provided by members are minor home repairs, cooking lessons, cellphone/computer assistance, grocery shopping or accompanying someone to a medical appointment. These are matched to the needs of a member who lives near them. Since the currency is time, each hour of service provided entitles the member to receive an hour of service in return.

This free program has brought many people, across the age spectrum, together in the community. Mashi hopes to continue expanding the program by recruiting additional member organizations as well as individuals.If you are interested in joining the BPC hub of TimeBank please contact Mashi at: Mblech@archcare.org or 646-395-5964.

Upcoming Events in January

Tuesday Night Trivia

Brookfield Place
Tuesdays
6 – 8 pm at Hudson Eats

Join for an evening of hard questions, brainteasers and prizes from our new partner!
For more info click here.

Teen Night: Parents not included

Teen Night

Fridays
4 -7 pm
6 River Terrace

Drop by for a few hours to meet friends or make new ones. Play table tennis, life-size chess, giant Connect-4 & Jenga, listen to music and relax. Grades 7-12. Free! For more info, visit www.bpcparks.org.

Drama Workshop

Battery Park City Public Library
January 7, 4:00 pm
175 North End Avenue

Join the story with props and costumes! Play games that teach you how to act by thinking on your feet! No acting experience necessary. This program is for ages 5-10. Sorry, no toddlers. Limited to the first 25 children and their caregivers. For more info, click here.

BUILDING BLOCKS

BUILDING BLOCKS

Skyscraper Museum
January 9, 10:30 – 11:45 am
39 Battery Place

Join us for hands-on exploration of our exhibit TEN TOPS and learn about different materials architects use to construct buildings. Then, design your very own skyscraper inspired by the Museum’s super-talls! Ages 4-8. Click here for more information.

SKYSCRAPER SEMINARS

SKYSCRAPER SEMINARS

Skyscraper Museum
Tuesday, January 12, 2016 6:30 – 8 pm
39 Battery Place

Currently under construction and slated to rise 117 stories above Central Mumbai, World One Tower will be the tallest building in Mumbai and one of the tallest residential towers in the world. Along with companions—World Crest (65 stories) and World View (95 stories)—the skyscraper forms the core of a mixed-use development comprising more than 6 million square feet on a 17-acre former textile mill site. A development of this scale in the center of Mumbai has posed unique construction challenges, presented important design opportunities, and occasioned questions of conventional local residential typologies and the role of tall-building development vis-à-vis urban fabric in one of the world’s most populous and rapidly redeveloping metropolises.

All guests must RSVP to programs at skyscraper.org to assure admittance to the event. Please be aware that reservation priority is given to Corporate Members of The Skyscraper Museum.

Musical Learning Time!

Battery Park City Public Library
January 13, 4:00 pm
175 North End Avenue

Sing along with songs that help you remember letters, numbers, and more! For preschool-age children and younger. For more info, click here.

Family Science Program: Egyptian Mummies!

Egyptian Mummies

Battery Park City Public Library
January 21, 4:00 pm
175 North End Avenue

How are mummies made? Learn about the Ancient Egyptian process, and then mummify your very own hotdog with baking soda to take home in a tomb that you will create. Recommended for school age children. First come first served to the first 25 children accompanied by an adult. First come, first served. Click here for more information.

Young Artists’ Workshops: Picture Books

Picture Books

Battery Park City Parks
January 23, 10 am
6 River Terrace, FREE!

Settle in for a reading of The Very Hungry Caterpillar followed by a hands-on, collage-creating workshop inspired by the work of Eric Carle. Paint, cut and glue papers to assemble your own collage. An art specialist and staff will demonstrate the techniques and help guide parents and caregivers in assisting their young artist. Recommended for children ages 2-5.

BUILDING BLOCKS

BUILDING BLOCKS 2

Skyscraper Museum
January 23, 10:30 – 11:45 am
39 Battery Place

Kids will listen to a reading of Scott Santoro’s The Little Skyscraper, then they will create their very own illustrated short story based on a favorite real or fantasy city! Tall tales of city skylines, architecture and skyscrapers will entice young architects to think BIG! Ages 4-8. Click here for more information.

THEATER: Breaking Bread

THEATER

Museum of Jewish Heritage
January 24, 10:30 am
36 Battery Place

Join us for a hands-on challah baking workshop and world premiere of an original play inspired by PJ Library Stories, Rise & Shine: A Challah Day Tale and Bagels from Benny.

$8, Free for children and grandchildren of MJH Members
Tickets sold at the door.

Book Club Meeting: “The Man in the High Castle” by Philip K. Dick

Book Club Meeting

Battery Park City Public Library
January 21, 4:00 pm
175 North End Avenue

Join the Book Club on January 26 for a discussion of The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. Our discussion starts at 6:15 pm on the second floor of the library. Click here for more information.

Gerard Koeppel Book Talk

Gerard Koeppel Book Talk

Skyscraper Museum
January 26, 6:30 – 8 pm
39 Battery Place

City on a Grid: How New York Became New York
Da Capo Press, 2015

No other grid in Western civilization was so large and uniform as the one ordained in New York in 1811. Not without reason. At the time, the city was just under two hundred years old, an overgrown town at the southern tip of Manhattan, a notorious jumble of streets laid at the whim of landowners. To bring order beyond the chaos—and good real estate to market—the street planning commission came up with a monolithic grid for the rest of the island. Mannahatta—the native “island of hills”—became a place of rectangles, in thousands of blocks on the flattened landscape, and many more thousands of right-angled buildings rising in vertical mimicry.

Gerard Koeppel is a native New Yorker, historian, and writer. He is the author of Bond of Union: Building the Erie Canal and the American Empire and Water for Gotham: A History. Koeppel has contributed to numerous other books, including the Encyclopedia of New York City, of which he was an associate editor, and The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan.

All guests must RSVP at the Skyscraper Museum.

Film Screening: Nicky’s Family

Museum of Jewish Heritage
January 26, 7 – 9 pm
36 Battery Place

Sir Nicholas Winton made international headlines because of his daring rescue of 669 Jewish children during the Holocaust. He recently passed away at age 106 on the anniversary of his largest kindertransport. This docu-drama recounts Winton’s story, which has touched the hearts of people around the world.
Post-screening discussion with Barbra Winton (If It’s Not Impossible: The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton), daughter of Nicholas Winton

$10, Free for Members. Tickets here.

Trilingual Story Time/ L’heure des histories en trois langues/ La hora de los cuentos en tres idiomas

Battery Park City Public Library
January 28, 4 pm
175 North End Avenue

A librarian shares stories, songs, and rhymes in English, French, and Spanish! Une libraire partage des histoires, des chansons, et des comptines en anglais, français, et espagnol. Una bibliotecaria comparte cuentos, canciones y rimas en inglés, francés y en español. For children of all ages. More info here.

Film Screening: Hester Street

Museum of Jewish Heritage
January 31, 3 – 5 pm
36 Battery Place

Post-screening discussion with Carol Kane and director, Joan Micklin Silver and moderated by film historian, Eric Goldman. Hester Street, a 2011 National Film Registry selection, with Kane’s brilliant portrayal of Gitl, a wife caught between two cultures, won her an Oscar nomination.

$15 General Admission & $12 for Members and Students. Tickets here.

And coming up in February…

The World Refugee Crisis

Museum of Jewish Heritage
February 2, 7 pm
36 Battery Place

Join Michael Abramowitz, Director of the USHMM Levine Institute for Holocaust Education, and Elisa Massimino, President and CEO of Human Rights First. Moderated by Nadine Strossen, Former President of the American Civil Liberties Union, leading scholars will discuss the current refugee crisis and examine the effectiveness of support efforts.
The refugee crisis is an agonizing issue that has become even more fraught with the recent attacks in Paris. Since the start of the conflict in Syria, more than 250,000 people have died and 12 million have fled their homes, making this the worst refugee crisis since World War II. Cautioning against indifference to the suffering of others, leading scholars examine whether or not we are doing enough.
$12 for members and students, $15 for non-members. To purchase tickets, call the Museum’s box office at 646.437.4202 or click here.

BUILDING ARCHES

Skyscraper Museum
February 6, 10:30 – 11:45 am
39 Battery Place

Young engineers will learn about different kinds of arches and buttresses. Kids will first work individually to make a model of an arch using Popsicle sticks, then work together to create one large arch using cardboard boxes and tape. The strength of the project will rely on the design of the arch and teamwork. Ages 8+.

THEATER: All Aboard!

Museum of Jewish Heritage
February 7, 10:30 am
36 Battery Place

Pick up your passport and get your tickets at this hands-on workshop. Board the boat and watch a new original play based on the PJ Library story, When Jessie Came Across the Sea.
$8, Free for children and grandchildren of MJH Members. Tickets sold at the door.

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