Monday Bulletin: Toxic Mold Said to Sicken Family in UWS Luxury Building; NYT Fashion Photographer’s Archives Headed for NY Historical; UWS School Mourns Late Actor; Columbia’s Acting President Defends Settlement with Feds

Monday, July 28

Mostly sunny, high 92.

More of the same tomorrow and Wednesday, with cooler temperatures expected Thursday and Friday. A thunderstorm is in the forecast for Thursday.

Notices

Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.

Manhattan Community Board 7 is conducting a survey to get a better understanding of what residents and other neighborhood stakeholders (such as elected officials) believe the purpose of the board is/should be. To participate, click — HERE.

Rats have been overrunning the newly planted Broadway medians and street tree beds this summer, and City Councilmember Gale Brewer, who represents District 6, is urging residents to report any evidence of infestation — such as burrows, tunnels, or damaged foliage — by filing a 311 report via the link below. The complaints will go directly to the NYC Parks Department, which is hiring more exterminators as part of a $900,000/year rat-fighting initiative. After making a report, residents are asked to call Brewer’s office (212-873-0282) with the file number, so they can coordinate with the Parks Department and other agencies on a plan of action. To report rats, click — HERE.

UWS News
By Laura Muha

A former Upper West Side couple has filed suit against the owners and management of the luxury building they lived in, claiming that failure to properly fix a leak allowed toxic mold to spread throughout their apartment and left them with multiple health problems, including vertigo, allergies, fatigue, and a rash that left their infant son crying in pain.

In a complaint filed last month in State Supreme Court, Jae Donnelly said the first evidence of mold was discovered in January 2024 when workers cut away a section of wall to fix a leak in the apartment, located in the Sessanta high-rise at 229 West 60th Street. Donnelly said he reported his concerns to management, but they failed to make repairs that would have stopped the spores from spreading, the New York Post reported.

It wasn’t until almost a year later, when workers returned to fix another leak, that they pulled the couch away from the wall and found “mold bubbling away on the surface of the wall and all down the back of the couch,” said Donnelly, a British-born photographer. When workers removed a large section of sheet rock, they discovered the mold had spread throughout the walls and floors of the apartment; it was even detected in the kitchen cabinets where the family kept their cookware.

Donnelly said that by then, he, his wife and their two young children, now ages 10 and 2, had begun suffering from unexplained health issues. Their daughter began missing school due to extreme fatigue, and their son developed painful pus-filled bumps on his buttocks. Tests showed they had high levels of mycotoxins (toxic compounds naturally produced by certain types of molds) in their blood.

The building owners and management “were negligent and reckless causing the Plaintiffs to sustain serious personal injuries as a result of prolonged exposure to mold,” the lawsuit alleges.

Because of the mold, the family moved out of the building and back to Donnelly’s native Britain earlier this year.

Align Management did not respond to the Post’s request for comment.

Read the full story — HERE.

Bill Cunningham, the late fashion photographer who spent decades documenting the city’s changing fashions for The New York Times, once half-jokingly threatened to burn the tens of thousands of images in his archive, because they’re not all flattering and he didn’t want them to fall into the wrong hands.

Fortunately for future generations of researchers and scholars, the photos and negatives, along with other memorabilia, have instead found a permanent home at The New York Historical, where they will be housed in the new Tang Wing for American Democracy, which is scheduled to open next year. As a prelude to its opening, the museum will exhibit Cunningham’s “Evening Hours” — his popular Times photographs documenting the city’s charitable galas and philanthropic events — later this year.

“Bill turned fashion into cultural anthropology,” Louise Mirrer, president of The New York Historical, told the Times. “He found the pulse of the city in every nook and cranny, photographing the glitzy, the wealthy, the crème de la crème, and making stops on his bicycle along the way to photograph other things that intrigued him, the grunge scene or a party downtown.”

Cunningham, who died at 87 in 2016, spent decades cycling around the city in his signature blue jacket, documenting a wide variety of subjects: men in dress shoes trying to navigate post-snowfall slush; NYC Marathon fashions;  Fashion-Week galas. “The best fashion show is definitely on the street. Always has been, and always will,” Cunningham said in a 2010 documentary about his life and work, “Bill Cunningham New York.”

Cunningham’s niece, Patricia Simonson, who oversees his estate, told the Times that The New York Historical was an appropriate place to house her uncle’s collection, because it’s located “right on Central Park West in Manhattan, where much of his work took place.”

Read the full story – HERE.

The late actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner, known for his role in “The Cosby Show,” is being remembered by the head of his UWS high school as “kind and encouraging, deep in his thinking, expansive in his reasoning, and a true friend to all.”

Warner, a 1988 graduate of the Professional Children’s School at 132 West 60th Street, drowned last week while vacationing with his family in Costa Rica.

“The entire PCS community is deeply saddened regarding the tragic passing of our beloved alumnus, Malcolm-Jamal Warner,” James Dawson, Ph.D., told FOX 5 NY. Dawson also told ABC NY that Warner had been planning to attend a school reunion this fall. “Malcolm touched so many lives, and I think that many people are going to be deeply impacted,” he said.

Read/watch the full story — HERE and HERE.

In her first interview since a deal with the Trump administration was announced last week, Columbia University’s acting president defended the agreement, which restores hundreds of millions of federal dollars in research funding in return for a series of concessions by the school.

“I think we were able to craft an agreement that is in line with our values and doesn’t cross any of the red lines we articulated,” Claire Shipman told the Columbia Spectator.

Under the terms of the agreement, Columbia admits no wrongdoing and cedes no say in hiring, admissions decisions, or academic speech. However, the university will pay a fine of more than $200 million to settle civil rights claims alleging that it failed to protect Jewish students from harassment in the wake of the ongoing Gaza war. The agreement also includes nearly 50 other requirements, including the elimination of race, color, sex, or national origin as considerations in hiring and admissions; and more careful vetting of prospective international students.

In addition, the school must periodically turn over data to an independent monitor, including admissions data that breaks down race, color, GPA, and performance on standardized tests for both admitted and rejected students. Critics say this represents a chilling intrusion of the government into the operations of a private university, and that it has implications for schools across the country.

But the Spectator quoted Shipman as saying “there was gonna have to be some sort of compliance mechanism,” and that the other alternative — a consent decree — would have been worse because it would have involved court supervision, as opposed to an independent monitor whom the university helped to select.

Read the full story — HERE.

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