New York City
Crumble in the Bronx
Threats to New York City’s Affordable Housing ♦ Note: This reported, unpublished story was written as part of a master’s program at the Columbia School of Journalism. With her peppery grey hair cut efficiently short, but dyed a youthful honey blonde, Martha Castro is a modern matriarch. At sixty-six, this mother of five children and grandmother …
Uptown Takedown
Wrestling takes hold in Harlem ♦ In Harlem, basketball and football are the most popular sports. But at Kappa IV, a public middle school at St. Nicholas and 135th Street, wrestling is gaining traction. The afterschool classes started a month ago, when an organization called Beat the Streets teamed up with Jets of Harlem, the youth …
The Lady and the Landmark
Ethel Bates wants a cooking school in the historic Corn Exchange. The city just tore part of it down ♦ Until she starts talking, Ethel Bates looks like anyone’s grandmother with her maroon windbreaker, a dun scarf wrapped turbanlike around her head. Short, forceful and sharp as a whip, this energetic 77-year-old community activist has …
The Saints Come Marching into Her Living Room
Behind the scenes at Marjorie Eliot’s Parlor Entertainment jazz sessions, an uptown institution. ♦ Over the years, Count Basie, Paul Robeson and other prominent Harlem musicians and artists have lived behind the embellished iron gates of 555 Edgecombe Avenue, just beyond Sugar Hill. In apartment 3F, jazz still lingers in the air every Sunday afternoon. Marjorie …
Waiting for a Christopher Columbus
Viaduct Valley, Harlem’s “meatpacking district”, is trying hard to survive. ♦ Whipping up from the Hudson River, wind funnels through the cross streets between 125th and 138th Streets. Up on the Henry Hudson Parkway, traffic inches toward the George Washington Bridge. On the other side of 12th Avenue, which disappears under a stone bridge, Riverside Park …
Community, DNA Crucial in Serial Rapist Arrest
By Rachael Horowitz and Sonal Shah ♦ After an intense two-month search, police have arrested the man they believe is responsible for raping and robbing four women in Hamilton Heights during August and September. DNA from the suspect, 21-year-old Vincent Heyward, matches DNA samples from all the rapes, and a 5th attempted attack, according to officers …