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March 18, 2011
Another Insert into the Music- Hands Joining Across Eras: Brooklyn Heights Unitarians and How a Historical Landmark Saved the Past For the Future
Noticing New York
A new post from Michael D.D. White alights several times on Atlantic Yards and Bruce Ratner, most prominently here:
A Naughty Brooklyn Museum Apologizing Naught (Bruce Ratner)
At this point we must fulfill our Noticing New York duty to point out how in 2008 the Brooklyn Museum besmirched the memory of Augustus Graham by awarding the Augustus Graham award to real estate developer/subsidy collector and eminent domain abuser Bruce Ratner.
Henry Stiles who, according to historian Olive Hoogenboom, wrote the standard book on Brooklyn history says that Graham was deeply motivated by a concern "for the poor, the suffering, the young, and those" neglected "portions of the community" and his determination to secure for them a larger “share of the great moral and intellectual privileges.” The Unitarian congregation’s website (in an article by Ms. Hoogenboom) points out how this “made him a role model for that church's great settlement work, out of which grew the housing reforms of Alfred T. White.” All of this is quite incongruous with the likes of Bruce Ratner. The Brooklyn Museum has yet to apologize to the community for its errant and profoundly community-damaging award “honoring” Mr. Ratner, whose firm is now implicated in the illegal bribing of public officials for favoritism in two recent instances: with respect to his Atlantic Yards mega-monoply here in Brooklyn and buying approval for the $630 million, 1000-apartment, 81-acre Ridge Hill Forest City Ratner Project in Yonkers.
Posted by eric at March 18, 2011 11:30 AM