NYPL Receives Nine-Figure Commitment; Experts Expect Stone Carver Unemployment Rate To Plummet By 100 Percent

I certainly don’t need my name inscribed on the facade of a landmarked building, you know, right at waist level, but since you asked:

The New York Public Library’s venerable lion-guarded building on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street is to be renamed for the Wall Street financier Stephen A. Schwarzman, who has agreed to jump-start a $1 billion expansion of the library system with a guaranteed $100 million of his own.

The project, to be announced on Tuesday, aims to transform the Central Library into a destination for book borrowing as well as research. The Mid-Manhattan branch, on the east side of Fifth Avenue at 40th Street, will be sold and its circulating collection absorbed into the new space.

The gift from Mr. Schwarzman, a library trustee and buyout guru who made fortunes as the chief executive of the Blackstone Group, is among the largest to any cultural institution in the city’s history. The 1911 Beaux Arts structure on Fifth Avenue will be called the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building after construction is completed around 2014. The building is protected by landmark status, and the library expects the name to be etched on the building should approval be granted by the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.

“We hope to incise the name of the building in stone in a subtle, discreet way on either side of the main entrance about three feet off the ground,” said Paul LeClerc, president of the library’s board of trustees. “It’s in keeping with the dignity of the building.”

. . .

Mr. Schwarzman said it was the library that proposed renaming the landmark building. “They said, ‘We’d like you to be the lead gift and give us $100 million and we’d like to rename the main branch after you,’ ” he said. “I said, ‘That sounds pretty good.'”

The Architecture Of Shoes

Form follows function, and function follows security at JFK’s new terminal 5*:

From the moment that passengers first arrive at JetBlue Airways’ $750 million terminal at Kennedy International Airport in September, they will face an unmistakably post-9/11 world.

Most airline terminals have been jury-rigged since 2001 to accommodate all the extra security workers and equipment. But JetBlue’s new Terminal 5 is among the first in the United States designed from the ground up after the terrorist attacks.

The 340-foot-wide security checkpoint will dominate the departures hall the way ticket counters once did, occupying the focal point of the Y-shaped building.

There will be 20 security lanes. “They were sized with the idea that passengers have luggage, have children, have wheelchairs and have special needs,” said William R. DeCota, director of aviation at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs Kennedy.

After running the security gantlet, travelers will find a lot of benches where they can pull themselves back together.

There will be subtler touches, too: resilient rubber Tuflex floor (instead of cold, hard terrazzo) for the areas where one has to go shoeless.

Location Scout: JFK.

*Not to be confused with the old Terminal 5 or other variations thereof.

Give Him Credit For Being Such A Moron

A cab driver who knows he’s driving around the former transportation reporter for the Post and still refuses to take his credit card is basically an idiot:

I went to taxi court, won my case and still wound up feeling guilty.

My cabdriver, Surjit Singh, had been completely in the wrong, but as I watched him squirm on the hot seat three feet away from me as though he were being tried for high treason and not Taxi and Limousine Commission Violation No. 2-61A1, I began to regret ever calling the city to complain.

Back on Dec. 28, Singh took me from Kennedy Airport to Brooklyn.

I told him that I used to be the transportation reporter for The Post and well understood the concerns about the new GPS and credit-card systems that had sparked two strikes. We even talked about a slew of recent news stories about how drivers were being fined for refusing to allow passengers to pay by plastic.

Then, as I watched the meter tick off the fare, I realized I wasn’t going to have enough cash to also give him a tip. But when I asked if I could pay by credit card, he lied and said the system was broken. I told him that it was clearly working and that I would tip double, more than covering the 5 percent transaction fee, but he insisted I go to an ATM.

After the ride, I called the city, and they scheduled a hearing for six weeks later, by which time I was no longer the slightest bit upset about it. Due to this cooling-off period, as few as 20 percent of passengers actually end up following through on their complaints, officials said.

. . .

An hour later, the judge came back with her decision. Singh was fined $500 for refusing to let me pay by credit card and for fraud, violations that put four points on his hack license. Two more points within a 15-month period and he would be suspended for 30 days; six more and his hack license would be revoked.

The whole thing seemed so excessive that if I had had the $500 in my wallet, I might have handed it to him.

Is The Bush Administration Ready To Attack Iran Or Something?

Go ahead and psychoanalyze America’s state of mind:

Prewar used to refer to sturdily built apartment houses with high ceilings, walls so thick you couldn’t hear your neighbors and perhaps black and white tiled floors in the bathroom.

It also used to mean stately edifices built before World War II.

Such fine points apparently have not stopped developers who are building a 20-story luxury condominium at 535 West End Avenue at 86th Street, with apartments of up to 14,000 square feet and prices from $8.5 million to more than $25 million. The developers are describing the building as prewar, both in advertisements that have appeared in recent weeks in anticipation of the building’s opening in summer 2009 and on a large sign wrapped around the scaffolding at the construction site.

. . .

. . . The label, [Gary Barnett, president of Extell Development Company] said, is intended to refer to the grand foyers, high ceilings, elegant moldings and spacious living and dining rooms, as well as to a brick exterior and limestone base that echo that of the building’s elegant older neighbors.

“It’s meant to evoke the style of prewar, right smack in prewar country on the Upper West Side,” Mr. Barnett added. “Of course, somebody called us and said, ‘What war are you planning in the 21st century?'”

Filet — Maybe, But Grilled Salmon Just Makes Me Think Of Cousin Dee’s Low-Budget Wedding

The Times checks the numbers and determines that congestion pricing is bogged down in the City Council:

It’s the signature policy item of his second term, but Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan may be in serious trouble, not only in Albany but in the New York City Council, which after two years of bowing to much of the mayor’s agenda seems suddenly emboldened to resist him.

A New York Times survey of the Council’s 51 members this week found opposition to the plan running at nearly a 2-1 ratio among those who have taken a position.

Mr. Bloomberg needs 26 votes for approval of the plan, which would charge drivers $8 to enter Manhattan below 60th Street.

Asked how they would vote if they had to decide today, 12 council members said they would vote yes, 20 said they would vote no, and 11 said they were undecided, but with serious concerns. The other eight did not respond.

The informal tally bodes poorly for the mayor, who must now split his attention between swaying undecided members of the State Assembly, where opposition up to now has been loudest, and assuaging concerns among council members. It also raises the question of whether council members are more willing to depart from the mayor’s agenda as they turn their focus to their next political campaigns.

And the City Council, known for its courage, seems set to do the right thing:

“It’s going to go down,” said Lewis A. Fidler, a Brooklyn Democrat who opposes congestion pricing. “I think the council members, recognizing it’s not going to pass in Albany, want to assert the integrity of this institution.”

The mayor’s plan must be approved by both the Council and the State Legislature by March 31 for New York to qualify for about $350 million in federal financing.

The mayor and his aides, along with Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, have started an effort to woo council members and legislators in recent weeks.

They stepped up their courtship Thursday night with a dinner at Gracie Mansion to which more than a dozen council members from Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island had been invited. Only six attended, and gathered around a table with the mayor and the speaker over grilled salmon and wine. In a cordial tone, Mr. Bloomberg made his pitch, warning them of the risk of losing federal money just as the city’s economy appears headed for bleak times, according to some members who attended.