Nope, No Walmart

The first headquarters of the NAACP, was at 69 5th Ave., where the New School building is now. From 1920 to 1938, they flew this flag whenever they received a report of a lynching anywhere in America. This view, which hasn’t changed much, is looking south on 5th Ave.

From the NY Times:

Barry Benepe, an urban planner who in 1976 conceived of inviting farmers to truck their ripe tomatoes, peppery arugula and fresh corn to forlorn patches of New York City, delivering bustling markets and excitement to the city along with flavorful and healthy food, died on Wednesday at his home in Saugerties, N.Y., in the Hudson Valley. He was 96.

New York’s popular Greenmarkets, the largest farmers’ market network in the country, helped start a national farm-to-table culinary movement. They are credited with saving thousands of acres of farmland in the region from development and reviving urban neighborhoods. Renowned chefs who discovered the bounties of fresh strawberries and zucchini blossoms were soon buying much of their seasonal produce from Greenmarket stalls.

Mr. Benepe (pronounced BEN-eh-pea) raised grant money and worked the city bureaucracy to organize the first market with a colleague, Robert A. Lewis, whose role was to recruit wary farmers. During a decade of high crime and urban decay in New York, farmers feared that whatever money they made would be boosted before they escaped the city.

Instead, the first Greenmarket — which kicked off in Manhattan in the summer of 1976 at East 59th Street and Second Avenue with a handful of upstate growers offering an open-air cornucopia — was an immediate success.

“It could not have been a better location,” between two popular department stores, Mr. Benepe recalled in a 2022 interview with On Hand, a foodie newsletter. “We were halfway between Bloomingdale’s and Alexander’s. We were in the passage between the two, so you had to stop.”

By contrast, the Union Square market — today the rock star of Greenmarkets — did not have a promising start. It opened later that year, but for weeks nobody came to visit the farmers who had set up in a park strewn with litter and known for drug sales. Mr. Benepe personally watered crab apple trees on the site.

The market went on to anchor a neighborhood rebirth that included Danny Meyer’s Union Square Café and a multiyear improvement plan by the Parks Department.

“We both loved the idea of the city benefiting from the revival of a European kind of lifestyle,” Mr. Lewis, whom Mr. Benepe hired in 1975 for his one-man planning firm, said in an interview. “He’d spent so much time in France and England. The daily shopping at the market. The fresh bread — this is Barry, a romantic.”

A company controlled by a Philadelphia 76ers co-owner was negligent when it allowed a lounge chair to fly off a Manhattan roof and hit a woman, leaving her with brain injuries, a new lawsuit alleges.

Annabel Sen had been on her way to lunch with her boyfriend on Jan. 25 when she “was struck by a heavy wooden lounge chair that fell from the terrace of the 12th-floor penthouse” of the 15 Union Square West Condominium building, according to her Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit filed Thursday.

“How [the chair] didn’t kill her is a miracle honestly,” Sen’s lawyer Benedict Morelli told The Post. “She is very damaged but she is not dead.”

The then-23-year-old Midtown West resident — who was heading to lunch at Xu’s Public House nearby — “suffered a severe, life-threatening, traumatic brain injury, among other injuries, that required emergency brain surgery. [Sen] has since had two more brain surgeries,” the court papers claim.

How do you feel about Union Square. The Union Square Partnership does an annual opinion survey to find out. Some thoughts from the results:

FOSTERING A THRIVING ECONOMY IN USQ
USP asked respondents to share the types of businesses
they would like to see in Union Square. Half of respondents
would like to see more cultural institutions (50%),
followed by art galleries/exhibitions (48%), and cafés/
coffee shops (47%). Many respondents mentioned wanting
to see more local businesses — including small, curated
stores, non-chain coffee shops and eateries, and specialty
grocery stores. This feedback highlights a strong community
interest in maintaining a vibrant retail environment in
Union Square rooted in unique, local offerings.

ENHANCING LIVABILITY IN USQ
USP is committed to keeping Union Square clean, safe, and
beautiful. The majority of respondents are satisfied (very
satisfied and somewhat satisfied) across key metrics of
USP’s work enhancing livability. Respondents reported the
highest levels of satisfaction with the landscaping of Union
Square Park (87%), planter landscaping (87%), Broadway Plaza
maintenance (85%), and public seating areas (77%). While
most respondents remain pleased with the district’s upkeep,
some expressed a desire for extended hours and seasonality
for the public seating areas as well as improved lighting,
especially in Union Square Park and surrounding streets.
Following USP’s 2023 launch of the Public Safety Officer
(PSO) program, perceptions of public safety improved by
15 points in the 2024 survey. The 2025 survey results show
that this perception has largely stabilized, with 87% of
respondents noting that their perception of public safety
in USP’s Core Services Area (CSA) has improved or seen
no change over the past year. Moreover, the percent of
respondents reporting concerns around public safety within
the CSA decreased by 15% in 2025 compared to 2024.

This is Union Square West in the ’40s. The reason all these buildings are so narrow is that the lots originally held townhouses.