The Week in Pictures for March 14

Slide Show

A slide show of photographs of the past week in New York City and the region includes snow removal in Bryant Park, a restored landmark in Brooklyn and the aftermath of an explosion in East Harlem.

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 Dan Barry, Kassie Bracken, Michael Powell, Kate Taylor and Michael Grynbaum; and The Rev. John Jenkins, president of Notre Dame.

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.

New York Today: After the Frost

Amy Weiss/New York Botanical Garden The flowers will be O.K.

Updated 10:01 a.m.

Good Friday morning to you.

It is still cold: 30 degrees at 10 a.m. But it will warm up a bit.

With all the grim news out there â€" the search for survivors in East Harlem, a scathing report on Metro-North â€" we were looking for something less unsettling.

We found it in nature.

Thursday was rough.

Painfully cold, terrifically windy.

Imagine if you were a flower.

“The poor little witch hazels were all curled up,” said Kristin Schleiter, the senior curator of outdoor gardens at New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx.

“The adonis amurensis did not want to open all day for shock.”

“The crocuses were brave little souls. They opened, a bit.”

But it turns out that they’re going to be O.K.

Windswept and a little wilted, but fine.

Because of the long, cold winter, the city’s gardens are running weeks behind schedule, bloom-wise.

So what’s out there now â€" low-lying flowers, bushes of witch hazel, a few daffodil shoots â€" is winter-ready.

“They can handle the cold,” said Ronnit Bendavid-Val, the director of gardens and grounds at Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

The crocus, wee harbinger of spring, grows flush to the ground.

That helps when it gets very cold, because it doesn’t have to move water up through long stems (which can freeze, like pipes).

“When there are fluctuations in the temperature, we’re shocked and bitter,” Ms. Bendavid-Val said.

“But plants are used to dealing with that.”

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

WEATHER

A mostly sunny 45 degrees this afternoon. Warmer Saturday with a possible early shower. Chillier Sunday.

And then.

Snow on Monday, maybe a few inches, but maybe up to six. Sorry, St. Patrick.

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.

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

COMING UP TODAY

- Mayor de Blasio visits a Red Cross shelter in East Harlem where people displaced by Wednesday’s building explosion are staying, at noon.

- Rallies against human rights abuses of sex workers, at State Supreme Court in Staten Island and in Times Square. 10:30 a.m.

- Horses and bicycles parade through Borough Park, Brooklyn, to drum up donations for a pre-Passover food drive. Starting at 11:30 a.m.

- The plaintiff in a 1950s bus desegregation lawsuit, Pvt. Sarah Keys Evans, speaks at the Veterans Affairs hospital on East 23rd Street. 11 a.m. [Free]

- Just in time for Pi Day (March 14 â€" 3.14, get it?), the pie purveyor Four & Twenty Blackbirds opens a cafe in the main Brooklyn Public Library. 8:30 a.m.

- More pi-jinks: Bedford Stuyvesant Collegiate charter school students hold a pi-reciting contest. The winner throws a cream pie at a teacher. 3:30 p.m.

- A talk on “Edith Wharton: A Writing Life” at the main New York Public Library. 2:15 p.m. [Free]

- A curator at the Brooklyn Museum gives a tour of the current exhibit “Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties.” 2 p.m. [$12]

- Asia Week, a celebration of Asian art, begins with exhibits and lectures at several museums and auction houses.

- The Whitney is free from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Fridays if you want to check out the Biennial.

IN THE NEWS

- An eighth body was found in the wreckage of the East Harlem building collapse. The search â€" for a last victim, and a cause â€" continues. [New York Times]

- A blistering federal report on Metro-North found a “deficient safety culture” that prizes on-time trains “to the detriment of safe operations and adequate maintenance.” [New York Times]

- Michael Bloomberg gave his first major interview since leaving office to Katie Couric, now of Yahoo News. [Watch]

- Bonus tracks: a refurbished CD drive sold at a store contained a disk with personal data from 15,000 M.T.A. workers. [Associated Press]

- Some Flushing residents mourn the imminent closing of a McDonald’s, an island of traditional American cuisine in a sea of Asian fare. [Daily News]

- A vintage clothing dealer’s $15,000 blue mink coat was stolen off the back of her chair at a Starbucks downtown. [DNAinfo]

- And a well-dressed woman (not in a mink) stole a replica of Dorothy’s “Wizard of Oz” slippers from a Hilton hotel display case in Staten Island. [Staten Island Advance]

- Scoreboard: Wild tame Rangers, 2-1.

THE WEEKEND

Saturday

- The “Degenerate Art” show of work condemned by the Nazis is up at Neue Galerie on Fifth Avenue.

- A show of quilts about Grand Central opens inside Grand Central. [Free]

-The Persian new year starts, sensibly enough, in spring. Celebrate it at the Asia Society. 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. [$12]

- “The Secret Lives of Presidents’ Wives,” a talk at the New York Public Library branch on West 100th Street. 2 p.m. [Free]

- Gotham Radio Theater recreates the 1930s radio series “Columbia Workshop,” live with music, at the Public Library for the Performing Arts. 2:30 p.m. [Free]

- A gardening session for children at the Queens Botanical Garden. 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. [Free]

- The Eterniday festival of the Language Arts at the Queens Museum. [$8]

- Whoa. A romp through the golden age of musical industrial films at Jalopy in Brooklyn features the world premiere of “The Bathrooms Are Coming.” That’s the “legendary 1969 American-Standard musical.” 8 p.m. [$10]

Sunday

- A hike to look for leprechauns at the Greenbelt Nature Center in Staten Island, for children and other wee folk. 1 p.m. [Free]

- Toot toot. It’s the New York Flute Fair, a day of recitals, workshops and competitions. Starts at 9 a.m.

- St. Patrick’s Day parades in the Bronx (at noon in Throgs Neck) and Brooklyn (1 p.m. in Park Slope).

- A full-moon tour of Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. [$15]

- Shhhh, it’s a party: A silent reading party at Muchmore’s bar in Williamsburg. 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. [Free]

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

- And if you’re looking for stuff to do outside New York City, The Times’s Metropolitan section has suggestions for Westchester, Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut.

AND FINALLY …

Ever want to get close to a bike that has won the Tour de France?

Until Sunday you can, at a shop in the meatpacking district.

Behind a rope at Rapha Cycle Club on Gansevoort Street are the machines Greg LeMond â€" the first American winner of the tour â€" rode in 1986, 1989 and 1990.

His jerseys are on display, too.

“Cycling fans see these pictures over and over again of someone crossing the finish line,” said Mike Spriggs of Rapha. “Now you can see the bike in person.”

Joseph Burgess contributed reporting.

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Big Ticket | Rupert Murdoch Pays $43 Million for Bachelor Pad

Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times One Madison at East 22nd Street

Rupert Murdoch, the newly single media tycoon, has acquired the triplex penthouse that crowns One Madison, the 60-story sliver of bronze glass designed by CetraRuddy, for $43,010,000. A 6,850-square-foot sponsor unit, it was the most expensive sale of the week, according to city records.

The listing price for the condominium, on the southeast side of Madison Square Park at East 22nd Street, had been $50 million. But Mr. Murdoch preferred to buy it as raw space, in so-called white-box form, to orchestrate the finishing touches with his handpicked design team; hence the discount. Raw or not, it has monthly carrying costs of $17,801.

The five-bedroom, five-and-a-half-bath triplex, which has a 568-square-foot wraparound terrace on its north and east sides, fulfilled Mr. Murdoch’s enthusiastic appetite for panoramic views and demand for total privacy, but it lacked the abundance of square footage â€" 10,000 square feet â€" he deemed appropriate to house himself and his extensive art collection. To remedy that, in an accompanying and not-yet-closed transaction, he has also bought the entire 57th floor, just below, to combine with his penthouse â€" in aggregate an impressive $57.25 million commitment to his accustomed master-of-the-universe lifestyle. The reason the three-bedroom, 3,318-square-foot downstairs unit has not closed in city records is that unlike the triplex, it is being delivered to its new owner fully finished and is not quite done.

Dolly Lenz, Mr. Murdoch’s broker, said the penthouse was the only property that met her client’s numerous requirements: “I was brought along to satisfy a complicated and extensive wish list, but from everything we looked at, this apartment was the star. There was an instant attraction, and it was also important to Mr. Murdoch that there is a very credible developer behind the property.”

Leslie Wilson, a senior vice president of Related sales and the director of sales at One Madison, represented the sponsors, the Related Companies, the CIM Group, and the HFZ Capital Group, which rescued One Madison, formerly One Madison Park, from fiscal-collapse limbo. Ms. Wilson says that Mr. Murdoch’s embrace of One Madison signifies its residential merit and investment potential.

“The fact that he was bedazzled by this penthouse at this location is a major statement about the growing allure of downtown,” she said, “and for us it’s a very important statement about the perceived quality of the product we’re offering, because we’re aware that a billionaire of his stature has lots of options.”

Ms. Wilson described the penthouse as “this sort of snow-globe with panoramic views of every iconic landmark in Manhattan. It’s like infinity-pool views.”

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

A version of this article appears in print on 03/16/2014, on page RE2 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Bachelor Pad Extraordinaire .

In the Snow With Two Canes

Dear Diary:

I was walking down Broadway in yet another snowstorm last month when I saw an elderly woman, bundled up but oh-so-fragile, inching her way along the icy sidewalk with the help of two canes.

I would have helped her, but I didn’t know how I could. I was thinking how difficult this winter had been for all of us and imagining that a woman who ventures out into the snow with two canes must find it all but unendurable.

She stopped â€" to catch her balance? Nope. She was using one of her canes to draw a heart in a patch of freshly fallen snow.

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