New York Today: Umbrellas on Parade

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

Updated 8:51 a.m.

Good wet Wednesday morning to you. It will rain all day.

But the heaviest part of the storm comes tonight.

When it comes to umbrellas, New Yorkers often have commitment problems.

We spring for them at the first splotch of rain.

And sometimes lose them before the ground is dry.

If you step out, you are likely to see one left on the subway or in a cab, at a bar or cafe.

You’ll want to hang onto yours today, though, as the chilly rain grows steadier, dumping up to an inch on our heads before dark.

It’ll be another raw day, with temperatures stuck in the 40s until nightfall, then rising as the rain turns torrential and causes widespread local flooding.

And beware: It may be umbrella-bustingly windy.

In honor of these transient companions, some New York umbrella facts:

- An umbrella sharing program, ‘brellabox, is coming to the city. A 12-hour rental will cost $2.50.

- Many umbrella vendors are immigrants from Senegal in West Africa.

- Their umbrella source: wholesale stores in Manhattan’s flower district.

- At the Rain or Shine shop on East 45th Street, a customer on Tuesday bought a folding Italian umbrella with red rhinestones on the handle for $130.

- Last year, architects created a floating dome from the skeletons of hundreds of umbrellas discarded around the city. It floated in the Bronx River.

Here’s what else you need to know for Wednesday.

COMMUTE

Subways: Delays on the Times Square shuttle. Check latest status.

Rails: Scattered delays on N.J. Transit Northeast Corridor. Check L.I.R.R., Metro-North or N.J. Transit status.

Roads: Delays of up to an hour at the inbound G.W.B and 40 minutes at the inbound Lincoln Tunnel. Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

Alternate-side parking is in effect all week.

COMING UP TODAY

- Authorities announce the arrests of six people for trafficking guns in Brooklyn. 11:30 a.m.

- Students from the Urban Assembly School for Emergency Management fan out to interview 1,500 New Yorkers about their storm preparedness.

- First public day of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden plant sale. Get there early; the competition is cutthroat. 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. [Free with $10 garden admission]

- Restaurants start serving 10,000 oysters from Atlantic Coast farms for the “Billion Oysters Project”; the shells will be used to cultivate oysters on Governors Island. 11:30 a.m.

- “Letters to the Mayor,” an exhibition of letters from 50 architects to the mayors of more than 20 cities, at the Storefront for Art and Architecture downtown. 11 a.m. [Free]

- Rangers-Flyers finale at the Garden. Nets at Raptors. Possible rainouts: Mariners at Yankees, Mets at Phillies.

- For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

IN THE NEWS

- A little-known state law blocks drivers from suing for pothole-related damages during the winter months â€" high season for potholes. [New York Times]

- A 4-year-old boy in the Bronx died after possibly eating rat poison. [New York Post]

- The couple who jumped to their deaths from the George Washington Bridge this week have been linked to the murder of the woman’s uncle. [Daily News]

- Finding adequate housing has become more difficult for the city’s aging residents. [New York Times]

- Gay Men’s Health Crisis, the AIDS advocacy group, hired a new leader. [Capital New York]

- The city is testing “townhouse-style” post-disaster housing in Downtown Brooklyn. [Brooklyn Daily Eagle]

- Scoreboard: Flyers clobber Rangers, 5-2, to force Game 7. Mariners sink Yankees, 6-3. Mets break Phillies, 6-1.

AND FINALLY …

A silent film star has her gravestone â€" nearly 100 years after her death.

Florence La Badie, known as Fearless Flo because she did her own stunts, died after a car crash in 1917, at 29.

She had made some 180 films, including “Cinderella” and “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

But her plot at Green-Wood Cemetery was unmarked until Sunday, when a marble stone reading “Fearless Flo” was unveiled.

No one is sure why her resting place remained blank for so long.

Sandra E. Garcia and Kenneth Rosen contributed reporting.

New York Today is a weekday roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till late morning. You can receive it via email.

What would you like to see here to start your day? Post a comment, email us at nytoday@nytimes.com, or reach us via Twitter using #NYToday.

Follow the New York Today columnists, Annie Correal and Andy Newman, on Twitter.

You can always find the latest New York Today at nytoday.com.

When a Restaurant Calls to Confirm a Reservation

Dear Diary:

O.K., Justine,
here’s the take-away.
Please
do not call
me back
to confirm
my dinner reservation
for Friday evening
at your restaurant,
because then I must
return your call
and I give you
my word right now,
cross my heart
Girl Scout oath
that I will
definitely, positively
show up on time.
Trust me.
Thank you
so very much.

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via email diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.

New York Today: Here Comes the Rain

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Updated 10:09 a.m.

Good cloudy Tuesday morning to you.

This is just the beginning.

If you do not own a working umbrella, today might be a good day to invest in one.

We are in for some major rainfall.

The rain will be on and off through tonight.

Then it gets steadier, until on Wednesday evening, when Mother Nature turns the tap all the way on.

By the time the last drop falls Thursday, forecasters expect 3.75 inches in the city.

“That’s almost a month’s worth of rain in just a couple of days,” said Tim Morrin of the National Weather Service.

And the most in one spell since last June.

If it were snow, it would be more than three feet.

And it won’t be nice warm tropical rain, either.

The storm system is the same one that flung tornadoes across Arkansas over the weekend. As it spins slowly northeastward, it will pick up cold, moist air off the still chilly Atlantic.

This will keep temperatures in the low 50s.

Widespread minor coastal flooding is expected tonight.

Wednesday, a flood watch is in effect for low-lying areas, small streams and rivers.

Mr. Morrin predicts “heavy ponding, really disrupting travel.”

Here’s what else you need to know.

COMMUTE

Subways: Check latest status.

Rails: Check L.I.R.R., Metro-North or N.J. Transit status.

Roads: Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

Alternate-side parking is in effect all week.

COMING UP TODAY

- E-cigarette regulations go into effect in the city. The devices are banned in indoor public spaces, parks and beaches.

- The Republican candidate for governor Rob Astorino speaks at a Crain’s forum at New York Athletic Club. 8 a.m.

- Volunteers answer immigration questions on a free hotline this week, at CUNY’s Guttman Community College in Midtown. …

- … While immigrant advocates protest collaboration between the city and federal immigration authorities at Federal Plaza at 11 a.m.

- Dos Equis gives away cactuses in Flatiron Plaza for its run-up to Cinco de Mayo. Noon.

- A rooftop installation by Dan Graham, “comprising curves of steel and two-way mirrored glass between ivy hedgerows,” is unveiled at the Met. [$25 suggested]

- Diane Keaton signs her memoir, “Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty,” at Barnes & Noble in Union Square. 7 p.m. [Free]

- Werner Herzog’s documentary “Grizzly Man” is followed by a talk with a wildlife journalist, at BAM. 7:30 p.m. [$13]

- Rangers look to eliminate Flyers on the road. Yankees host Mariners. Mets visit Phillies.

- For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

IN THE NEWS

- Representative Michael G. Grimm, of Staten Island, was indicted on fraud charges. [New York Times]

- A man and a woman died after jumping off the George Washington Bridge together. [New York Post]

- Three men were sentenced to 20 years in prison for their roles in the city’s scandal-ridden payroll project known as CityTime. [New York Times]

- The ancient Obelisk in Central Park will get a laser cleaning starting this week. [Gothamist]

- A group of Occupy Wall Street veterans is effectively advocating for tenants threatened by gentrification in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. [New York Times]

- A note from a man claiming to be trapped in a Chinese prison factory was found in a Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag. [DNAinfo]

- A feminist pole dancing performance, involving ropes, scaffolding, bungees “and even the performers’ own shirts and socks,” takes place in Williamsburg this week. [The Brooklyn Paper]

- A man who was said to have been trying to carjack a taxi in the Bronx had to cling to the side of the vehicle for several miles when the driver stepped on the gas. [CBS]

AND FINALLY …

Today in Staten Island, junior scientists from the Cub Scouts and middle schools may be out-squirmed by their subjects.

They will be counting eels.

They are glass eels that have migrated from the Sargasso Sea to Richmond Creek.

In their infancy, they are just an inch or two long, translucent and spaghetti-like, visible only by the black of their eyes.

Later, they grow thick, opaque, and up to four feet.

The thousands of glass eels that come to our waters are a sign of improved water quality, environmental officials said.

They may stay for up to 20 years before returning to the sea.

Sandra E. Garcia and Kenneth Rosen contributed reporting.

New York Today is a weekday roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till late morning. You can receive it via email.

What would you like to see here to start your day? Post a comment, email us at nytoday@nytimes.com, or reach us via Twitter using #NYToday.

Follow the New York Today columnists, Annie Correal and Andy Newman, on Twitter.

You can always find the latest New York Today at nytoday.com.

A New York Passover Story

Dear Diary:

My firstborn daughter, Evelyn, accompanied her daughter to New York City. Returning to the hotel, they sat together with my husband in the taxi’s back seat. The taxi driver invited me to sit in the front with him and launched into conversation with the click of the meter.

DRIVER: “You must be Egyptian. You have Egyptian eyes!”

ME: “Really? You’re Egyptian?”

DRIVER: “I was born in Egypt. My family is there.”

ME: “I thought I recognized you!”

DRIVER: “So you are from Egypt.”

ME: “No. In another life I was a Hebrew slave and you were an Egyptian taskmaster. Incidentally, you owe me for back wages.”

We rode on in silence. After exiting the taxi, my daughter fumed: “Mom! I can’t believe you said that! I am never going to ride in a taxi with you again!”

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via email diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.

A New York Passover Story

Dear Diary:

My firstborn daughter, Evelyn, accompanied her daughter to New York City. Returning to the hotel, they sat together with my husband in the taxi’s back seat. The taxi driver invited me to sit in the front with him and launched into conversation with the click of the meter.

DRIVER: “You must be Egyptian. You have Egyptian eyes!”

ME: “Really? You’re Egyptian?”

DRIVER: “I was born in Egypt. My family is there.”

ME: “I thought I recognized you!”

DRIVER: “So you are from Egypt.”

ME: “No. In another life I was a Hebrew slave and you were an Egyptian taskmaster. Incidentally, you owe me for back wages.”

We rode on in silence. After exiting the taxi, my daughter fumed: “Mom! I can’t believe you said that! I am never going to ride in a taxi with you again!”

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via email diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.

New York Today: Crime and Punishment

John Marshall Mantel for The New York TimesMark Mazer, left, and Gerard Denault face sentencing in the CityTime scandal.

Updated 6:58 a.m.

Good Monday morning to you.

It was one of the biggest scandals in New York City’s recent history.

The city, looking to get more efficient at managing its sprawling work force, hired outside contractors to redesign the payroll system and help save money.

Instead, the contractors took advantage of weak oversight and inflated the $63 million project known as CityTime into a $700 million boondoggle.

Today, three men who collectively stole more than $40 million while working on the project will be sentenced in federal court in Manhattan on conspiracy, bribery and money-laundering charges.

Prosecutors asked the judge for sentences of 105 years, 80 years, and 30 to 40 years.

Fitting punishment, they said, for men who treated the city “like it was their own giant A.T.M.”

The men’s lawyers, of course, say the proposals are excessive.

“Absurd on its face,” wrote the lawyer for the defendant facing the proposed 105-year term, Gerard Denault.

“Does the government really believe that this offense deserves a sentence six times longer than sentences imposed for murder?”

Mr. Denault’s lawyer asked the judge for a five-year sentence instead.

Here’s what else you need to know.

WEATHER

Mostly sunny, warm and downhill from here.

A high of 64 today.

Rainy and chillier on Tuesday. Lots of rain on Wednesday.

Live in the present.

COMMUTE

Subways: Delays on the southbound 5. Check latest status.

Rails: Delays on North Jersey Coast Line. Check L.I.R.R., Metro-North or N.J. Transit status.

Roads: Deegan very slow southbound through the Bronx. Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

Alternate-side parking is in effect all week.

COMING UP TODAY

- Representative Michael Grimm of Staten Island is expected to be indicted on federal fraud charges.

- State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, accompanied by Mayor de Blasio, releases a report on the growth of the city’s high-tech industry. 12:45 p.m.

- Advocates for worker safety release a report on workplace deaths and march to what they say is an unsafe construction site. 51st Street, between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, at noon.

- Holocaust survivors from Belgium, Germany and Poland talk to visitors at the Museum of Jewish Heritage downtown in observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day. 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. [$12]

- The mayor also speaks at a Holocaust remembrance ceremony at Lincoln Square Synagogue on Amsterdam Avenue. 8 p.m.

- Readings of plays from five continents open the week-long Pen World Voices Festival at CUNY’s Segal Theater in Midtown. 2 p.m. [Free]

- A panel on poverty past and present at the Tenement Museum, moderated by the Times columnist Ginia Bellafante. 6:30 p.m. [Free]

- Readings from the essay collection “The Opposite of Loneliness” by Marina Keegan, a young writer who died in a car crash, at BookCourt in Brooklyn. 7 p.m. [Free]

- A concert by the Shanghai Quartet at Advent Lutheran Church on the Upper West Side. 7:30 p.m. [Free]

- For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

IN THE NEWS

- Physical therapists in Brooklyn are among the leading recipients of national Medicare dollars. [New York Times]

- A proposed city law would ban businesses from asking job applicants about their criminal records until after a job offer is made. [Daily News]

- A smuggler of illegal immigrants who died in prison was mourned as a folk hero in Chinatown. [New York Times]

- New York’s state poet chose her favorites from the more than 2,800 haiku about the city submitted by Times readers. [New York Times]

- Double rainbows were spotted (and photographed) above the city over the weekend. [Gothamist]

- Scoreboard: Rangers upend Flyers, 4-2, need one win to clinch. Nets succumb to Raptors, 87-79. Yankees edge Angels, 3-2. Mets harpoon Marlins, 4-0.

AND FINALLY …

This week in 1972, Mayor John V. Lindsay wrote a letter to Washington on behalf of an immigrant couple who faced deportation.

Their removal, the mayor wrote, would be contrary “to the principles of our country” and amount to “a grave injustice.”

The couple’s problems stemmed from the fact that one of them had pleaded guilty to marijuana possession in his native country.

His name was John Lennon.

Other prominent figures petitioned immigration authorities in support of Lennon and Yoko Ono.

“Artisans and universal megagalactic entities,” wrote the poet Gregory Corso. “Ergo, let my people go â€" stay â€" etc.”

Proceedings dragged on for years, but the Lennons, of course, remained in New York.

Benjamin Weiser and Sandra E. Garcia contributed reporting.

New York Today is a weekday roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till late morning. You can receive it via email.

What would you like to see here to start your day? Post a comment, email us at nytoday@nytimes.com, or reach us via Twitter using #NYToday.

Follow the New York Today columnists, Annie Correal and Andy Newman, on Twitter.

You can always find the latest New York Today at nytoday.com.

Recreational Bicycling vs. Delivery Bicycling

Victor Kerlow

Dear Diary:

An early spring Sunday on West 56th Street. Two bicyclists cross paths in front of me.

The first is a young man in a snazzy blue and yellow racing suit, a matching helmet, bike shoes and bike gloves.

The second is an older man in a white kitchen tunic and a baseball cap, balancing a bag full of food he is about to deliver somewhere.

The two men’s eyes meet, and I am struck by how differently each must view a Sunday bike ride in Manhattan.

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via email diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.

Annual NYC Sikh Day Parade

Todd Heisler/The New York TimesBill de Blasio, third from left, attended the Annual NYC Sikh Day Parade in Midtown on Saturday.

Bill de Blasio, third from left, attended the Annual NYC Sikh Day Parade in Midtown on Saturday.

Week in Pictures for April 25

.media.slideshow.in-page-player .headline { display: none; } Slide Show

A slide show of photographs of the past week in New York City and the region includes the New York State Pavilion in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, high school scuba divers in Coney Island and a chicken coop in Forest Hills, Queens.

This weekend on “The New York Times Close Up,” an inside look at the most compelling articles in Sunday’s Times, Sam Roberts will speak with The Times’s Joe Nocera, Jo Becker, Josh Haner, Kate Taylor, Michael Powell, Clyde Haberman and Eleanor Randolph.

Tune in at 10 p.m. Saturday or 10 a.m. Sunday on NY1 News to watch.

Read current New York headlines and follow us on Twitter.

Haiku Challenge: A Poet’s Picks

Michael Kirby Smith for The New York TimesThe Times received more than 2,800 submissions in its Haiku Challenge about New York City.

Marie Howe, the state poet of New York, reflects on writing haiku and The Times’s Haiku Challenge, which asked readers to submit a 17-syllable poem about New York City.

A traditional haiku was attentive to time and place and most often referred to a season of the year. It was rooted in observations of the natural world and demanded an accuracy that refused romantic clichés. The language might be simple, the images taken from common life, but the insistence on time and place was crucial.

Many of the poems received did not find their inspiration in nature â€" most did not hold some implicit Buddhist insight about nature â€" elements essential to the traditional haiku form. These are New York City haiku. But the best of the poems we received had a quality of the right now-ness of actual experience â€" a moment that happens! And happens again as we encounter it in reading. The freshness and wit of the images held more than we could say. Yes, we thought, New York is like that. Like what? Like that. Yes. That.
â€" Marie Howe, the state poet of New York

On the 6 to Spring
two cops help a tourist whose
map is upside down
â€" Frances Richey, 63, Manhattan

If the “F” comes now,
I could get there, right on time.
But I’m still in bed.
â€" Jill Helene, 34, Manhattan

Riding through the park
no daffodils blooming yet
â€" but unbuttoned coats.
â€" Sharon Rousseau, 50, Manhattan

“Insufficient fare!”
But, without saying a word,
stranger swipes me in.
â€" Janet Gottlieb, 59, Brooklyn

I hear them fighting
Through the thin wall between us â€"
but I don’t take sides.
â€" Nurit Israeli, 71, Manhattan

On the roof, standing,
flying his kite in the sky
the street disappears.
â€" Eugene Dunscomb, 83, Southbury, Conn.

A version of this article appears in print on 04/27/2014, on page WE8 of the Westchester edition with the headline: A Poet’s Picks.

Big Ticket | For $13.4 Million, Hitching Post Included

Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times165 East 73rd Street.

A quaint brick-and-limestone carriage house at 165 East 73rd Street that spent 110 years under the ownership of one family sold for $13.4 million and was the most expensive sale of the week, according to city records.

The two-story structure on a block between Lexington and Third Avenues that is a designated historic district was listed in January for $14.5 million; the annual property taxes are $54,696.43.

The 25-foot-wide Beaux-Arts-style carriage house was designed in 1903-04, with a twin next door at No. 167, by George L. Amoroux to shelter the armada of horses and carriages belonging to Henry Harper Benedict, the president of the Remington Typewriter Company. The property was converted to residential use after horses were eclipsed by automobiles, with hardwood flooring and crown molding installed throughout the second-floor apartment in 1939. Downstairs, vestiges of its decades as a stable are still visible in 2014: Hitching posts, blanket racks and the trap door for the hayloft enhance its character.

In recent years, the 5,058-square-foot property had an eight-room, three-bath rental unit on its upper floor, which has 10-foot ceilings. The ground floor, where the ceilings are 15 feet high, had a garage space and an in-law/owner’s apartment.

The original owner, Mr. Benedict, was the great-uncle of the seller, Antoinette Weiser, who grew up in an apartment in the carriage house but now lives in New Mexico.

Vannessa Kaufman of Sotheby’s International Realty was the listing broker, and Michele Kleier of Kleier Residential represented the buyers, who used a limited liability company, 165 East 73rd Street. According to their broker, they will turn the carriage house into a single-family residence: Its 21st-century incarnation will be that of a luxury townhouse.

Big Ticket includes closed sales from the previous week, ending Wednesday.

Public Grooming

Dear Diary,

You know that thin, clear plastic wrapping superfluously used to shroud plastic deli cutlery?

On a recent upbeat commute home one Friday afternoon, I took a seat on a downtown subway to find a nearby passenger dutifully twisting and spinning his plastic wrapping found, for lack of any better tool, in his green carrying bag bearing an antiquated American Airlines logo. His goal? Dental floss.

At this realization, my concern shifted to any flight associated with his subsequent flossing mission, were he to be successful at dislodging his discomfort.

Herein represents the dynamic I both love and loathe about living in the city. In daily public life there is an ethos of “live and let live,” and at times, “let me live right-in-your-face.” It reminds me that the day is not just determined by me. After a number of years living here, I still reserve all my grooming to the privacy of my bathroom.

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via email diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.

New York Today: Moving Verses

Michael Kirby Smith for The New York TimesPoetry in Motion places poems in the transit systems to inspire and encourage commuters to read poetry from emerging and established poets.

Updated 8:31 a.m.

Good morning on this fair Friday. Look out for changing weather.

Grand Central is for poets.

At least this weekend, when the Poetry in Motion Springfest takes over the terminal.

Poems from the subway series will be projected on the walls, acclaimed poets will write poems for the public, and children can try their hands at various poetic forms.

Alice Quinn, the director of the Poetry Society of America, will be there.

“They roped me into wearing a long white dress and reciting Emily Dickinson,” she said.

“In Vanderbilt Hall!”

Ms. Quinn, the former longtime poetry editor for The New Yorker, selects poems for Poetry in Motion, a series that began in 1992.

Ms. Quinn described what she and the team at the M.T.A.’s Arts for Transit program look for when choosing poems for the subway.

“You want them to be diverse,” she said.

“And a range that encompasses the experience of a young person, as well as someone who has experienced the vicissitudes of city life.”

Ms. Quinn recalled an episode on a downtown train.

“Years ago, I watched a woman memorize a poem,” she said, describing “Wilderness,” by Lorine Niedecker.

“From 96th to 14th Street, she just read it over and over.”

Here’s what else you need to know for Friday and the weekend.

WEATHER

Dry, then wet: partly sunny, with humidity a very low 25 percent this afternoon and a high of 61.

Brush fires â€" like those that burned Thursday in Staten Island and in New Jersey â€" may continue.

Then clouds, and after dark, quite a bit of rain.

All in a day’s work for April â€" it’s both the second-wettest month and the peak of fire season, thanks to lots of dry air masses and fast-moving storms.

“You can have an inch of rain fall over the area,” said Joseph Pollina of the National Weather Service.

“Then maybe not the day after but the day after that, if it’s been windy, or breezy even, those fuels dry out quickly.”

Saturday’s a mixed bag, too, with some sun but maybe a sprinkle by mid-afternoon.

Sunday: plain old sunny.

COMMUTE

Subways: Delays on the 7. Check latest status.

Rails: Scattered delays on L.I.R.R. Check L.I.R.R., Metro-North or N.J. Transit status.

Roads: No extraordinary delays. Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

Alternate-side parking is in effect.

Weekend Travel Hassles: Check subway disruptions or list of street closings.

COMING UP TODAY

- Mayor de Blasio signs some bills, including one requiring carbon monoxide detectors in certain public spaces.

- A rally outside Brooklyn borough hall in support of the district attorney’s plans to stop prosecuting minor marijuana offenses. 11 a.m.

- The Bowling Green street fair downtown is one of a bunch of street fairs around the city today and this weekend.

- The Shakespeare Sonnet Slam: readings of all 154 poems at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park. 1 p.m. [Free, standby readers wanted]

- Mets host Marlins. Angels at Yankees. Nets host Raptors. Rangers at Flyers.

IN THE NEWS

- Twenty-three Columbia students signed federal complaints charging that the school mishandles sexual assault and harassment cases. [New York Times]

- The hurricane-damaged emergency room at NYU Langone hospital reopened after 18 months. [New York Times]

- A man was arrested on charges of breaking into a Queens apartment and beating three women with a hammer. [NY1]

- Officials are going after a Brooklyn landlord accused of wrecking apartments to drive out longtime tenants. [New York Times]

- The F.B.I. is looking into claims that opponents of the horse-carriage industry committed extortion by threatening a campaign against Christine Quinn if she did not support a ban during the mayoral race. [Daily News]

- The city agreed to pay $55,000 to an Occupy Wall Street videographer who was tackled by a police chief. [Runnin' Scared]

- Someone hung 25 dead cats inside plastic bags from trees in Yonkers. [Journal News]

- An on-duty detective got drunk with a colleague and accidentally shot him in the wrist, the authorities said. [DNAinfo]

- Mayor de Blasio made his debut on the glitterati circuit at a Vanity Fair film-festival party. [New York Times]

- The Queens water wonderland Spa Castle is opening a Manhattan outpost. [Observer]

- Two gorillas were born at the Bronx Zoo. [New York Times]

- Posted to Instagram: a 1909 photo of the half-finished Manhattan Bridge.

- Scoreboard: Yankees chew up Red Sox, 14-5, as Pineda gets 10-game suspension for pine tar. Mets club Cardinals, 4-1.

THE WEEKEND

Saturday

- The Van Cortlandt Park Hike-a-Thon features walks from one to five miles. 9:45 a.m. [Free]

-The Brooklyn Zine Fest includes work from more than 75 writers, artists and small presses, at the Brookln Historical Society. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., also Sunday. [Free]

- Bring your old paint cans and other household poisons to a hazardous-waste disposal day at Cunningham Park in Queens. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. [Free]

- Feminist fireworks: the artist Judy Chicago’s pyrotechnic display “A Butterfly for Brooklyn” lights up Prospect Park. 7:30 p.m. [Free]

Sunday

- Arbor Fest at the Queens Botanical Garden includes live music, beer, and widespread tree worship. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. [$4]

- Bring stuff and take stuff at a Stop ‘n’ Swap on the Lower East Side. 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. [Free]

- Opening reception for “Combined Overflow,” a show of works about the Gowanus Canal and Newtown Creek, at Proteus Gowanus in Brooklyn. 6 p.m. [Free]

- For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

AND FINALLY …

An interactive show of drawings at the Bronx Museum of the Arts tonight features an unusual canvas: the audience.

The drawings on the walls are tattooed onto participating museumgoers.

Then the wall art is destroyed, so that the only remaining works are on the skin.

The show is called “Portadores,” Spanish for carriers.

The idea, say the artists, Almudena Lobera and Isabel Martínez Abascal, is that “the viewer becomes an integral part of the work.”

Indeed.

The event starts at 6:30. It is free and includes a bar, but donations are suggested.

Kenneth Rosen contributed reporting.

New York Today is a weekday roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till late morning. You can receive it via email.

What would you like to see here to start your day? Post a comment, email us at nytoday@nytimes.com, or reach us via Twitter using #NYToday.

Follow the New York Today columnists, Annie Correal and Andy Newman, on Twitter.

You can always find the latest New York Today at nytoday.com.

Glad He Became an Auxiliary Police Officer

Dear Diary:

I was having doubts about my sanity as I walked my beat on that freezing February night. I was a reasonably successful architect who, heeding an “Ask not… ” moment, had joined the New York City Auxiliary Police Force.

After four months of training, fingerprinting, F.B.I. background checks and a battery of tests, my group had been photographed, issued our police ID cards and vanned down to One Police Plaza for our uniforms and gear. Now, assigned to the “Two Four” (24th Precinct), my partner and I were walking the familiar Upper West Side turf that had been my home for most of my adult life.

A young woman, leading an elderly woman, approached us.

“Officers, this woman is lost and confused. Please help her.”

I looked at the sweet-looking older woman, in her late 70s or early 80s, wearing a bathrobe over a nightgown, and walking in bedroom slippers.

Her short gray hair was neatly brushed and her clothes, though wildly inappropriate for the weather, were clean and neat.

I took off my heavy police jacket and draped it around her. “Ma’am, where did you come from?”

She smiled at me and answered: “I was born in Germany. My name is Helen.”

With one arm around her, I grabbed my division radio. “Two four portable to Central. K.” (Cop talk for “I am on foot patrol from the 24th.” “K” means end of transmission.)

“Two Four portable.”

“I have an elderly disoriented female, dressed in nightclothes at southwest corner of Broadway and 82nd. Send a sector car.” (Police car.)

A new voice on the radio.

“This is the Two Zero (20th Precinct). Give description of elderly female.”

“Late 70s, 5-foot-3, short gray hair, name of Helen.”

An excited voice on the radio. “That’s her! Husband just called and is frantic. We’ll be right there.”

As I saw the flashing lights approaching I leaned down to her and said, “Don’t be frightened, Helen, we’ll soon have you home.”

With her trusting face she looked up and said, “How could I be frightened, with two handsome policemen taking care of me?” With a mixture of pride and satisfaction I helped her into the car on whose door was written:

“TO PROTECT AND SERVE.”

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via email diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.

Even After Setbacks, a Musician Insists That the Show Will Go On

Earl Wilson/The New York TimesHamiet Bluiett, a baritone saxophonist, in Midtown. He will play at a show called “Cirque du Jazz” this weekend.

Hamiet Bluiett should not have even shown up, let alone picked up his musical instrument. He’s had two strokes in the past two months and his doctors have urged him to take it easy.

But when you’re a legendary jazz artist, who in a career spanning over half a century has performed alongside the likes of Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Tito Puente and Stevie Wonder, it’s hard to say no.

Which is why he found himself the other day at the Manhattan headquarters of the Jazz Foundation of America rehearsing for a coming gig.

“My doctors are saying I shouldn’t be walking around or bending down, let alone playing my horn,” said Mr. Bluiett, 73, who is widely considered the world’s greatest baritone saxophonist. “I told them that they are going by what their machines are saying, and I’m going by what my body is saying, so the show will go on.”

That show, called “Cirque du Jazz,” will take place on Saturday night at Hudson Studios at 601 West 26th Street. It will also feature a host of other jazz notables, including the pianist and composer Randy Weston, the saxophonist Billy Harper and the multi-instrumentalist Kahil El’Zabar.

“Hamiet Bluiett is a spirit force of enormous inspiration,” Mr. El’Zabar said. “His five octave range on the baritone sax has made him a legend where young baritone players all over the world have sought his tutelage. The baritone sax is considered a somewhat difficult instrument for jazz, but Hamiet, the way he circular breathes endlessly, makes it look effortless.”

Mr. Bluiett, who was born in Brooklyn, Ill., grew up playing the piano, trumpet and clarinet, but did not begin playing the saxophone until he was 19.

“I wanted to play baritone; that was my favorite,” Mr. Bluiett said. “But I had to wait until I was big and strong enough to play it.” (The baritone saxophone, heavy and cumbersome, is one of the larger members of the saxophone family. It is bigger than the tenor saxophone and smaller than the bass.)

Mr. Bluiett joined the Navy band in 1961, serving and entertaining for the next five years. In his mid-20s, he became greatly influenced by the sounds of Harry Carney, the baritone player in the Duke Ellington band.

“I’ve had a great many musical influences in my life, but Harry Carney was probably the biggest,” he said.

In the late 1960s, Mr. Bluiett co-founded the Black Artists’ Group of St. Louis, an organization dedicated to showcasing and enhancing the talents of black musicians, filmmakers, poets and other artists. He led the group’s big band for two years before coming to New York in 1969.

“If you were a jazz musician, New York was the place to be,” he said.

In the ensuing years, Mr. Bluiett became the Babe Ruth of baritone. He joined popular jazz bands like the Charles Mingus Quintet and Sam Rivers’s large ensemble, and later co-founded the World Saxophone Quartet. He continued to jam with numerous bands, taught music to schoolchildren throughout the United States and has been hired as a design consultant by saxophone manufacturers around the world.

“The saxophone is a support instrument, but I have been fortunate enough to be recognized as someone who has stood out front in that supporting role,” Mr. Bluiett said. “In terms of the instrument I chose, I may have settled at the bottom of the totem pole, but I like to think of myself as being at the very top of that bottom. Now I’ve had my share of bad performances, but I don’t let disaster go to my heart the same way I don’t let praises go to my head.”

Mr. Bluiett, who is divorced and a great-grandfather and lives in Harlem, has fallen on hard times in recent years. While he continues to recover from his second stroke, he has not yet recovered financially from a fire in 2002 that destroyed his home, and most of his possessions.

During each setback, the Jazz Foundation of America â€" which holds benefit concerts like the Cirque du Jazz to raise money for struggling musicians â€" provided financial help for Mr. Bluiett. The foundation bought him new clothing and furniture after the fire and helped pay his medical bills during hospital stays after both strokes.

“The Jazz Foundation has assisted me all the way through,” Mr. Bluiett said. “They are always there when I need them, and they have helped many other jazz musicians in a time of need. I don’t know where we would be without them.”

Mr. Bluiett then went back to rehearsing. As he played, he was unaware that a well-known veteran jazz drummer named Billy Kaye, 82, had walked into the room.

“The kid still got it,” Mr. Kaye said. “He kind of makes you want to get up and dance.”

Gorilla Birth Alert!

Julie Larsen Maher/Wildlife Conservation SocietyA month-old western lowland gorilla with her mother at the Bronx Zoo.

The Bronx Zoo’s gorilla forest was the site of not one but two blessed events recently: Julia, a 33-year-old western lowland gorilla, had a baby on March 10. Her colleague Tuti, 19, gave birth just last Thursday.

Little is known about the babies so far â€" not even their gender. But both appear to be in good health. They are the first babies born in the Congo Gorilla Forest at the zoo since 2006.

Julie Larsen Maher/Wildlife Conservation SocietyTuti and her five-day-old baby.

Whether you’ll be able to see the babies by going to the zoo will depend on several factors, including weather and temperature, the zoo said.

For now, you can get your fill here. Welcome to the world, little gorillas.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 24, 2014

An earlier version of this post misspelled the name of one of the gorillas. She is Tuti, not Tutti.

New York Today: The Nanny Van

Marisa JahnHonk if you care.

Updated 5:57 a.m.

Good morning on this gusty Thursday.

A local artist named Marisa Jahn bought a 1976 Chevy van on Craigslist last year for a couple of thousand dollars.

Today, it will begin touring the East Coast.

It’s the Nanny Van.

Project Nanny Van aims to teach domestic workers about their rights.

There are an estimated 200,000 domestic workers - nannies and housecleaners - working in the New York City metropolitan area.

Under a New York State law passed in 2010, these workers have rights and protections that few of them know about, Ms. Jahn said.

“Most of them work in isolation,” she said.

The van will be stationed outside parks, libraries and other spots frequented by domestic workers in the city starting next week: Flushing, Queens is their first stop.

It will distribute literature “with superhero Pop Art graphics with local flavor â€" one character wears a head wrap from Trinidad and Tobago,” Ms. Jahn said.

And a phone number.

Calling 347-WORK-500, domestic workers can listen to more than a dozen episodes about issues in domestic work, recorded by domestic workers, in English and Spanish.

Already, between 300 and 1,200 people call the line each month.

In one of Ms. Jahn’s favorite episodes, “there are two lungs, talking to the domestic worker,” she said.

One lungs says, in a deep voice, “You’ve got to stop using that harsh oven cleaner.”

The workers’ reaction?

“They think it’s hilarious,” she said.

Here’s what else you need to know for Thursday.

WEATHER

Warm, windy and bone dry: there’s a brush-fire alert from 9 a.m. till 8 p.m.

High of 64 degrees, gusts up to 38 miles an hour.

Bring sunblock and windbreaker, leave matches home.

COMMUTE

Subways: Check latest status.

Rails: Check L.I.R.R., Metro-North or N.J. Transit status.

Roads: Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

Alternate-side parking is in effect through Friday.

COMING UP TODAY

- It’s Tech Day, “the largest single-day start-up event in the world,” at Pier 92. Elected officials will hand out awards to city start-ups. 9 a.m.

- A display for Holocaust Remembrance Day opens at the New York Public Library. 10 a.m.

- Tavern on the Green reopens in Central Park. 11 a.m.

- It’s “Poem in Your Pocket Day.” Students recite poems, accompanied by a band called Humani and The Peace Poets, at Bryant Park. 11 a.m.

- Postal workers march outside the main post office on Eighth Avenue to protest a partnership allowing Staples to offer postal services. 11 a.m.

- Animal rights activists protest at the site of a recent horse carriage accident, across from the Plaza Hotel. 1 p.m.

- Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña speaks at Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s Overcrowding Task Force across from City Hall. 4 p.m.

- Parents and teachers demand an end to high-stakes testing outside the city’s Department of Education. 4 p.m.

- The mayor and the first lady attend the premiere of “The Amazing Spider-Man 2″ at the Ziegfield Theater this evening

- Henry Kissinger and Rabbi Peter J. Rubinstein discuss the Middle East at the Central Synagogue on the Upper East Side. 6:30 p.m. [live webcast]

- For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

Kenneth Rosen contributed reporting.

New York Today is a weekday roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till late morning. You can receive it via email.

What would you like to see here to start your day? Post a comment, email us at nytoday@nytimes.com, or reach us via Twitter using #NYToday.

Follow the New York Today columnists, Annie Correal and Andy Newman, on Twitter.

You can always find the latest New York Today at nytoday.com.

Post Office Rules

Dear Diary:

Observed at the Rego Park post office in Queens on a window:

We will gladly take your order when you finish your telephone conversation.

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via email diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.

New York Today: Balloon’s-Eye View

AirphotosLIVE.comHigh above the chimney tops.

Good Wednesday morning to you.

About that balloon …

This week, a big white balloon appeared over the city.

First on the Lower East Side, then uptown, where 57th Street meets the East River.

Residents were told it was photographing potential views, for architects and real estate developers.

We decided to learn more.

The balloon is called an aerostat, or a tethered balloon.

Its owners call it Lucy, after its seamstress.

It has gone as high as 1,376 feet â€" the height of what became One World Trade Center’s observation deck.

“We’ve taken photos from every new skyscraper in the city,” said Curt Westergard, the president of Digital Design and Imaging Service, a company based in Falls Church, Va.

That is, before they were built.

The balloon is around 12 feet across. It travels in a trailer, which opens on top, like a jack-in-the box. A mast guides the balloon and a winch slowly releases it into the air.

(No, you cannot fly in it.)

Why hire a balloon for the job?

It’s illegal to fly commercial drones over urban areas, and helicopters can’t go below 1,200 feet.

As for the residents on the silk-stocking Upper East Side, no one seemed to mind the slightly bagel-shaped balloon, which hovered over them for around an hour.

“They straightened their jackets and patted their hair,” Mr. Westergard said.

“They thought they were being filmed.”

Here’s what else you need to know for Wednesday.

WEATHER

Uncertainly sunny, steadily breezy, with big gusts now and then.

And a high of 57.

Growing cooler at night.

COMMUTE

Subways: Check latest status.

Rails: Check L.I.R.R., Metro-North or N.J. Transit status.

Roads: Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

Alternate-side parking is in effect all week.

COMING UP TODAY

- Public schools reopen after spring break.

- It’s the last day to register your child for prekindergarten.

- The City Council will propose adding 1,000 new police officers, to expand community policing and street safety. The number of uniformed officers has dropped in recent years. 11 a.m.

- Police Commissioner William Bratton speaks at the “Empowering Men to Speak Out Against Sexual Violence” rally, on Denim Day, part of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. City Hall steps. Noon.

- Happy 450th birthday month, Shakespeare. Actors intone his lines while visitors write them on a giant canvas at Bryant Park. 12:30 p.m.

- Nelson Mandela’s grandson, Mandla, kicks off a preview of the planned “South Africa’s Mandela International Film Festival,” at the Tribeca Film Festival. 6 p.m.

- Old people games for young people: Bingo night at the Royal Palm Shuffleboard Club in Gowanus, Brooklyn. 7 p.m. [Free, $2 per bingo card]

- Books about fighting: Senator Elizabeth Warren appears alongside her new book, “A Fighting Chance,” at Barnes & Noble in Union Square. 7 p.m. [Free] …

- … While the writer and Iraq war veteran Kevin Powers reads from, “Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting: Poems,” at Barnes & Noble on the Upper West Side. 7 p.m. [Free]

- For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

IN THE NEWS

- A police initiative asking New Yorkers to post photos of themselves with police officers on Twitter backfired when users posted photos of police violence. [New York Times]

- Some farms in upstate New York have done away with human hands, using automatic milkers to check and milk cows instead. [New York Times]

- Scoreboard: Raptors devour Nets, 100-95. Rangers ground Flyers, 4-1. Yankees shred Red Sox, 9-3. Cardinals outpeck Mets, 3-0.

Kenneth Rosen contributed reporting.

New York Today is a weekday roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till late morning. You can receive it via email.

What would you like to see here to start your day? Post a comment, email us at nytoday@nytimes.com, or reach us via Twitter using #NYToday.

Follow the New York Today columnists, Annie Correal and Andy Newman, on Twitter.

You can always find the latest New York Today at nytoday.com.

A Bright and Colorful Easter Sunday

.media.slideshow.in-page-player .headline { display: none; } Slide Show

Even a Bouncer Can Cry

Victor Kerlow

Dear Diary:

The bouncer outside the Lower East Side rock club looked formidable, even by the standards of his profession, and he behaved that way, too.

“Full house,” he snarled at me. “You gotta wait till someone leaves.”

Which was fine by me â€" I really wanted to see the band that was headlining the bill that night, and it wasn’t due to start yet. I just wished the guy weren’t so gruff about it.

While he checked his cellphone, ignoring me, a Goth kid sauntered up, looked around for a minute, and stole past the bouncer into the club. Shouting an expletive, the bouncer raced inside to find him. I admit I felt amused when he came back a few minutes later, apparently unsuccessful.

Then something strange happened: The bouncer burst into tears and wept loudly, with no apparent shame at doing so.

Not quite able to believe what my eyes and ears were registering, I asked him what was wrong.

“Did you see that punk sneak past me?” he said between sobs.

“Uh … yeah. So?”

“So I can lose my job for that!”

Neither one of us spoke now. I just gaped at him until new prospective customers appeared.

“Full house,” the bouncer told them in a broken voice, using a palm to wipe tears off his cheeks. “You gotta wait till someone leaves.”

The young woman, mystified by the weeping behemoth, turned to me.

“What did you do to him?” she asked.

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via email diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.

Early Bloomer, Aptly Named

Dave Taft

Plants offer pollinators many rewards â€" nectar, pollen, even perfumes for attracting the perfect mate. Not many offer heat. During the cold days of spring, the Eastern skunk cabbage offers insects a warm, dark place to eat and sleep.

Skunk cabbage can bloom in our area as early as February, a time when snow and ice blankets the wet woods. Evolution has guided it to a series of highly unusual adaptations through which the plant (Symplocarpus foetidus) attracts spring’s earliest insect pollinators.

Naturalists only half-kiddingly note that skunk cabbage acts more like a skunk than a cabbage. The plants are thermogenic, maintaining a temperature several dozen degrees higher than their surroundings for almost two weeks during their flowering season. Like some character from a medieval bestiary, the skunk cabbage melts through ice and snow â€" as if determined to show off its remarkable flowers.

The skunk’s actual flower is tiny and petal-less. To see it, sidle up next to one in muddy sphagnum moss, and peer into the widened slit at one side of the flower’s dark hood, or spathe, to use the technical term. Inside, the flowers are aligned on a fleshy stem called a spadix. This flower arrangement is typical of the Arum family, which includes plants such as the skunk cabbage, calla lily and jack-in-the-pulpit. It also includes mysterious tropical plants like the voodoo lily and houseplants like philodendrons.

The spathe is the most visible part of the skunk cabbage’s flower, and it evokes nothing so much as dead meat. It is a streaky greenish purple, or sometimes even a deep maroon color, and has evolved to imitate rotting animals. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The bright colors and floral scents of spring’s better known wildflowers are weeks away. And to insects active at this time of year, the purple sheath of a skunk cabbage’s flower and its “fragrance” are a welcome mat.

Dave Taft

The scent of skunk cabbage is strongest if you have scraped or broken a plant’s developing stems or flowers. Most foul-smelling Arums (the skunk cabbage is one) release colorfully named, volatile compounds like cadaverine and putrescine, which imbue the smell of rotting flesh in a flower.

In another page out of the medieval bestiary, the skunk cabbage has contractile roots. To anchor it in the soft, waterlogged soils of wetlands, the skunk cabbage’s roots grow out from its rhizome and then contract as they mature, essentially pulling the plant deeper into the soil. As anyone who has ever tried to dig out an old plant will tell you, they are almost impossible to be rid of.

When mature, a skunk cabbage has leaves almost three feet long, but don’t look for one in the fall. Beginning in August, the plant begins to dissolve into a black goo, and by mid-September, the aboveground cabbage has vanished, leaving only seeds for the coming spring, and an underground rootstock, waiting for midwinter to reawaken.

A version of this article appears in print on 04/20/2014, on page MB4 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Early Bloomer, Aptly Named.

Back to the Finish Line in Boston

Elise Amendola/Associated PressRebekah Gregory DiMartino, who was severely injured in the Boston Marathon bombing last year, after crossing the finish line in her wheelchair Saturday in the Boston Marathon Tribute Run. She was accompanied by Tracy Kiss, left, of Framingham, Mass.

Rebekah Gregory DiMartino, who was severely injured in the Boston Marathon bombing last year, after crossing the finish line in her wheelchair Saturday in the Boston Marathon Tribute Run. She was accompanied by Tracy Kiss, left, of Framingham, Mass.

Week in Pictures for April 18

.media.slideshow.in-page-player .headline { display: none; } Slide Show

A slide show of photographs of the past week in New York City and the region includes a spring scene at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, a meat market in the East Village and the funeral for a New York police officer.

This weekend on “The New York Times Close Up,” an inside look at the most compelling articles in Sunday’s Times, Sam Roberts will speak with The Times’s Tyler Hicks, Liz Robbins, Eleanor Randolph and Clyde Haberman; the author Francine Prose and the playwright Robert Schenkkan.

Tune in at 10 p.m. Saturday or 10 a.m. Sunday on NY1 News to watch.

Read current New York headlines and follow us on Twitter.

The Stations of the Cross in Red Hook

.media.slideshow.in-page-player .headline { display: none; } Slide Show

The World’s Fairgrounds, Then and Now

Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesStructures of the New York State Pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair remain standing.

What was once an ash heap in Corona, Queens, became the site of the 1939 World’s Fair. Its avenues, in turn, provided the layout for the 1964 World’s Fair. Despite Robert Moses’ intention of making Flushing Meadows-Corona Park a jewel of the city after the event, its evolution has been fitful. A few structures from the fair stand in good condition; others have fallen into disrepair; and still others have been reinvented.

Shea Stadium. Opened five days before the World’s Fair in 1964, it became the home of the New York Mets and the New York Jets. On Aug. 15, 1965, the Beatles played a 30-minute set before 55,000 screaming fans. The stadium was torn down in 2009 and turned into a parking lot; Citi Field, the new home of the Mets, was built next door.

Singer Bowl. An open-air stadium seating 18,000, it was built in 1964 by the Singer Sewing Company. In 1973, it was renamed the Louis Armstrong Memorial Stadium. (Armstrong, in fact, lived only blocks away until his death in 1971.) It was the centerpiece of the U.S.T.A. National Tennis Center when it opened in 1978, and it remained so until 1997, when Arthur Ashe Stadium was built.

Port Authority Heliport. An actual heliport topped the structure; the Beatles landed there on their way to their 1965 concert at Shea. The restaurant at the top, Terrace on the Park, is still open as a catering hall, with views that are said to be more spectacular than the food. When Madonna first came to New York, she lived in Corona and had a job running the elevators there.

New York State Pavilion. Consisting of an oval pavilion, a theater and three spaceship-like towers, the complex was designed by Philip Johnson. Murals that had decorated the outside of the pavilion, including Andy Warhol’s “Thirteen Most Wanted Men,” were painted over before the fair opened.

New York City Pavilion and Ice Theater. Originally built for the 1939 World’s Fair and later used as the home of the United Nations General Assembly, the 1964 pavilion featured a ride around a panoramic model of the city, as well as an ice skating show. It became a museum in 1972, and until 2008 the city operated an ice skating rink in the south end. The museum still houses the panorama.

Hall of Science. The Hall of Science, built for the fair, reopened as a science museum in 1966 and has since undergone several renovations. Nearby, in Space Park, were spacecraft and rockets, donated by NASA and the Defense Department. The Atlas and Titan II rockets remain outside; the Mercury I capsule is in the museum.

Chrysler Pavilion. The Queens Zoo opened on this site in 1968. The zoo’s aviary is the former New York World’s Fair Pavilion (later the Winston Churchill Pavilion), a geodesic dome designed for the fair by R. Buckminster Fuller.

Pool of Industry. During the fair the pool was the site of an elaborate nightly fireworks show, with music and tons of water spraying in the Fountain of the Planets. Community opposition helped derail plans last year to build a Major League Soccer stadium on the site of the pool.

World’s Fair Marina. Built specifically for the fair on Flushing Bay, the marina then held 800 slips for boats. There now are 250 slips.

Unisphere. Constructed of stainless steel, 120 feet in diameter and 140 feet tall, the Unisphere became the symbol of the 1964 World’s Fair.

Readers Share Their Memories of 50 Years Ago in Queens

Robert KestonLisa Keston Danielpour, 51, of Beachwood, Ohio, remembers her grandfather treating her and her cousin to ice cream at the 1964 New York World’s Fair.

For the 50th anniversary of the opening of the 1964 New York World’s Fair, we asked readers to share their memories and photographs from their visits to the fair. Here is an edited sampling of memories and photographs submitted by readers.

As I was only 4 years old when my family visited the World’s Fair, my memories are less than vivid. What I do recall was going through the “Small World” ride. It was terrifying! The music was muffled, and I barely recall seeing anything. I’m sure I kept my eyes closed throughout the ride, and whenever I opened them, I caught glimpses of the scary moving objects. I could not get out of that ride soon enough.
â€" Amy Lee, 52, Manhattan

The G.E. Pavilion had a wonderful program that featured a “family” that benefited from the changes wrought by new electrical appliances through the decades. But the G.E. site also had a demonstration of nuclear fusion, which was held in a special hall and featured a loud report which scared the wits out of me.
â€" Thomas H. Alton, 56, Philadelphia

I was 12 in 1965 and I convinced my parents to let me go “alone” with my friend Ronald. Our biggest excitement: refillable soda at the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion. Endless soda, which I never before then experienced. Cup after cup. Heaven in Queens!
â€" Gene Russianoff, 60, Brooklyn

My family plus my Aunt Mary attended the fair one early spring day. My brother and I and my aunt went off in one direction and my parents another. From what I recall, we planned on meeting later by one of the Brass Rail restaurants. Anyway we went on the Swiss Sky Ride instead of walking back. My aunt grabbed my hand; she was so scared she nearly broke my fingers.
â€" Jon Berger, 58, Queens

What impressed me the most at the time â€" a memory that is still filled with color and excitement in my mind â€" was seeing real El Greco paintings in the Spanish pavilion. Somehow the El Greco sighting made me feel like the equal of anyone â€" I wasn’t relegated to merely reading about the important things in the world; I could experience them firsthand. I was 17 but I was having adult experiences!
â€" Judith Vanderkay, 66, Brookline, Mass.

I lived across the street from the fair and I visited many, many times â€" often by climbing the fence. On many occasions I would hop the fence to hear a performance by the great Paul Lavalle and his Cities Service Band of America. I thought he was the greatest person that ever conducted a concert band. He was a great musician and showman. He so influenced me that I spent my entire career as a music educator and band director.
â€" Andy Isca, 62, Grayson, La.

The animatronic Abe Lincoln and the way he spoke and moved intrigued me. I could not figure out how he could still be alive and talking to me.
â€" Cheryl Jacobs, 55, Columbus, Ohio