In an archipelago of classrooms scattered around Washington Square, NYU offers more languages, including courses in translation and interpretation, than any other school in New York.
Part of New York magazine’s Best of New York 2007 cover story; read the original on line.
With more than 60,000 titles in its window-lit, two-floor space—66 shelves of fiction, 42 of picture books, and a center table loaded with prizewinners and staff picks—the Bank Street Bookstore is the mother lode for kids’ lit, with the largest variety, the best selection, and the most unusual and provocative books for young readers and the adults around them. Staffers are “voracious, passionate readers” who are paid to read weekly, says manager, buyer, and onetime preschool teacher Beth Puffer. Their breadth of knowledge puts chain stores to sorry shame, as does a well-edited selection of educational toys and games. Regular events include an ongoing reading series headlined by Cynthia Nixon and superstar kids’ author Jon Scieszka. Books come in seventeen languages, including Urdu, Bengali, and Vietnamese. In the market for Winnie-the-Pooh? Find it here three ways: in English, Latin, and Yiddish. Or snap up the hotly awaited The Talented Clementine, hitting the shelves on April 1.
Once hipsters discovered the working-class, immigrant area of Greenpoint, the developers weren’t far behind. It’s a familiar pattern and, like the booms in Chelsea and the East Village, it has its pluses and minuses. … On the housing front, rezoning in 2005 made the scruffy waterfront ripe for high-rise luxury condo-maximums. Two years in, a necklace of multistory buildings circles McCarren Park; it’ll yield more than 400 luxe homes. …
You knew what was coming in Williamsburg and Greenpoint. It’s a well-worn path: ethnic-industrial neighborhood turns artists’ haven, turns trend central and then turns developers’ cash cow. The grit and charm (not to mention the cheap rents and ample space) that lured exiled East Villagers are quickly being eroded by a sweeping development program that is heralded variously as visionary, exploitive or somewhere in between. While advocates tout the plans as an exemplar of positive urban revitalization, to dissenters who post on blogs like Brownstoner, it looks more like the Miamification of Brooklyn.