On Sunday the skies were clear, the winds had eased and the waterfowl had resumed their patrol of the East River shoreline, pecking in the sand for tiny bites to eat or diving crazily into the surf for heartier fare. Downtown residents, meanwhile, had resumed their routines of biking or jogging or fishing or tai chi along the East River Esplanade, relieved that Hurricane Joaquin was finally roaring out to sea and not aiming at us. Count me among them. Because despite what the

This statue of Giovanni da Verrazano currently lies behind a chain-link fence as Battery Park is refurbished. On the upside, Verrazano was the first to correctly map New York Harbor. On the downside, the ancient mariner mistook Chesapeake Bay for the long-sought sea passage to India and China. Nobody's perfect. We'll be glad to see him back on his perch soon. #GiovannidaVerrazano #BatteryPark #LowerManhattan

A vital link to the city's past is in danger of slipping away. The National Trust for Historic Preservation last week included Lower Manhattan's South Street Seaport district on its annual list of America's 11 Most Endangered Places. The trust correctly worries that a 43-story residential highrise proposed by the Dallas-based Howard Hughes Corp. would wreck the Seaport's unique relationship to the waterfront and compromise one of Manhattan's last intact 19th-century neighborh

These are frustrating times for world-famous architect Santiago Calatrava, designer of the long-awaited WTC Transportation Hub. When his PATH commuter rail station finally comes to life within the next few months, it will be eight years overdue with a pricetag of $4 billion, twice the original estimate. Even by New York standards, those numbers sound a little nuts. Four billion dollars for a station that will serve maybe 200,000 riders a day? Did the Port Authority let Calatr