May 14th - May 20th, 2004

Skyscraper Museum Launches Interactive Online Feature

Friday, May 14: Downtown's recently opened Skyscraper Museum launched a new interactive feature on its website (www.skyscraper.org), offering visitors the opportunity to view more than 2,000 documents about New York City's most historic buildings through an interactive map highlighting 120 area buildings, the New York Times reported.

As part of the museum's new Visual Index to the Virtual Archive (VIVA), the interactive map links visitors to historical information about city skyscrapers, including old postcards, construction photographs, and other historic documents. 

Skyscraper Museum Founding Director and Curator Carol Willis also hopes to have digital reproductions of the museum's 5,000 artifacts available online in the future, the Times reported.

For more information about the Skyscraper Museum, as featured on LowerManhattan.info, please click here.

Planning Begins for St. Nicholas Church

Friday, May 14: Development and religious officials are already working on a plan to rebuild the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, a historic structure at the World Trade Center site that was destroyed during the 9/11 attacks. 

While details have not yet been confirmed, the new St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church -- the smallest building planned for Ground Zero -- is expected to occupy 5,200 square feet of a park located directly across Liberty Street from the WTC site, close to where the 1916 structure stood before it was destroyed, the New York Times reported. 

"The historic nature of the church and the fact that it's been there so long has convinced everyone that trying to provide space for it would be important to the future, in terms of telling the story of what happened Sept. 11," LMDC President Kevin Rampe told the Times.

Archbishop Demetrios, the primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in America, has already made public his plans to hold an international design contest for the new church, which will also function as a multiuse, interdenominational center, and he hopes that the design will meld spirituality with modern day architecture, the Times added.

Emergency Crews Practice During Mock Subway Blast

Sunday, May 16: More than 500 emergency responders participated in a staged terror-response drill conducted by the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) at downtown's Bowling Green subway station. The four-hour exercise was part of a project called "Operation Transit Safe," an emergency drill meant to test the capabilities and responses of city, state, and federal agencies. For complete coverage, please click here.

9/11 Panel Concludes Hearings in New York

Wednesday, May 19: The independent commission tasked with investigating the 9/11 attacks held public hearings in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday and Wednesday to further evaluate emergency response efforts in New York City.

The commission called officials, including former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and members of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, to testify before an audience that included 2,749 relatives of victims. The 10-member panel questioned each of the 13 witnesses as part of its comprehensive investigation into the attacks, the New York Times reported.

Over the past five months, the commission has questioned both federal and municipal officials, as well as family, friends, and coworkers of the victims.

Stuyvesant to Adjust Student Enrollment

Wednesday, May 19: After receiving reports that Stuyvesant High School decreased the size of its incoming freshman class for the past two years, New York City education officials called for the school to compensate for the drop in enrollment by admitting an additional 100 students to both its freshman and sophomore classes in the 2005-2006 school year, the New York Times reported.

Stuyvesant, one of the city's most esteemed public high schools, has enrolled an average of 3,000 students annually over the past decade, exceeding what school principal Stanley Teital believed was a 2,600 recommended student capacity, the Times reported. But the decision to reduce enrollment was not sanctioned by the New York City Education Department, especially amid a growing shortage of space in the city's top schools. "We believe that there should be a bigger entering class," Education Department spokeswoman Eileen Murphy told the Times.

It is too late in the admissions process, however, to change admissions results for students who applied this year, education officials stated.