Shortly before the Battery Park City Branch Library opened for the fi rst time Monday morning, Percy Corcoran stood outside, craning her neck to catch a glimpse of the books.

“We’ve been waiting for 12 years,” said Corcoran, who ran letter-writing campaigns to build the library in her

The last few minutes of waiting March 15 finally ended when Billy Parrott, the branch manager, pushed open the glass doors just after 10 a.m., welcoming in Corcoran and the hand- ful of others who arrived early.

million library, just ahead of Corcoran, were Elizabeth Yuan and her 3-year- old daughter Madeleine.

“We’re very excited,” said Yuan, who lives near the library, which is in the base of the Riverhouse condo

Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Paterson and HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan came to Rutgers Houses on the Lower East Side on Monday, along with a score of state and city offi cials, to celebrate final approval of complex legislation to provide a combination of public and private money to 21 New York City Housing Authority projects that received almost no funding for several years.

Officials declared that the transaction, made possible by last year’s federal Recovery and Reinvestment Act — the economic stimulus package — along with state and city enabling legislation, will make NYCHA eligible for an imme- diate $400 million in federal funds, plus an estimated $65 million to $75 million in federal money each year forever.

Overwhelmed by a record number of kindergarten appli- cations Downtown, the city promised last week to build a new elementary school for Lower Manhattan.

The new 450-seat school would be located on the West Side between Hudson Square and Battery Park, an area where schools are already overcrowded and the city antici- pates still more growth, said Elizabeth Rose, director of portfolio planning at the Dept. of Education. The city has not yet found a site for the school, so it likely would not open for at least a couple of years.

Desperate for space, city opens a Gateway to P.S. 276

It took us a minute to realize what the most powerful man in Albany (sorry Gov) was talking about — but then we understood: Last week, UnderCover’s sister column Scoopy’s Notebook in The Villager, reported that Silver never uses a middle initial.

We suggested that perhaps Silver could take on his own middle name if he felt so deprived, but he just chuckled and waved away the idea.

New Councilmember Margaret Chin (once she reach- es the three-month mark, should we stop calling her “new”?) has gained at least one big supporter since tak- ing office: Bob Townley, Manhattan Youth’s executive director.

During last year’s campaign, Townley was a vocal advocate for former Councilmember Alan Gerson, whom Chin unseated. But at a recent meeting on the cuts to I.S. 89’s after-school program, Townley said he was impressed by Chin’s proactive response and her staffer

Inspired by the massive success of Taste of Tribeca, an annual event that brings in over $100,000 a year for P.S. 234 and P.S. 150, parents at the Spruce Street School are organizing a Taste of Front St. for this May or June. The idea came from Paul Hovitz, a longtime Seaport resident, and Spruce parents and Front St. res- taurants immediately jumped on board.

“The situation of Front St. is desperate,” Dallorso said, adding that the fundraiser needed to happen before the fall because he wasn’t sure how many restaurants would still be open in six months.

Tribeca’s Greenwich St. is so chi-chi that nearly half of the buildings don’t have visible addresses, according to a new report (minus our “chi-chi” spin) by Manhattan Beep Scott Stringer. He says the lack of addresses not only violates city code and is annoying, it also poses a safety risk by delaying emergency responders.

His office looked at 13 busy streets in Manhattan and found about 40 percent of the locations did not have addresses. The worst offender was Eighth Ave. between 42nd and 59th Sts. with 58 percent of the locations being too cool for school or numbers. Greenwich between Murray and Spring Sts. trailed the way Downtown at 49 percent followed by Canal between Bowery and Hudson St. at 38. Lower Broadway between Cedar and Franklin Sts. scored the best in the borough, but still 20 percent of the spots were lacking building numbers.

U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney loosened up and got in the Twitter spirit (or at least a campaign staffer did) this week reveling in Carole King’s performance at a Maloney event and tweeting to the singer: “You make me feel like a natural Congresswoman!” Although if endorsees could be choosers — with enormous respect to King — we’d still take the Queen of Soul’s version of “…Natural Woman.” But even if she were so inclined, Aretha Franklin, with her famous fear of flying, was probably not going to take a midnight train from Motown for Maloney. (We won’t speculate about Gladys Knight.)

88 Fulton Street
(Corner of 33 Gold St.)
New York, NY 10038
212.587.8930
212.587.8935

EDITORIAL PAGES. . . . . . . . . . . 18 - 19 YOUTH. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 - 22 ARTS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 - 26 CLASSIFIEDS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27

The upcoming week’s schedule of Community Board 1 committee meetings is below. Unless otherwise noted, all committee meetings are held at the board office, located at 49-51 Chambers St., room 709 at 6 p.m.

Two Bedroom, Two Bath with Spectacular Water
Views and Magnificent Sunsets, Large Private Deck,
Reserve Parking and Private Entrance

Over 1,433 Square Feet of Living Space
Beautifully Furnished
Heated Swimming Pool
Central Air Conditioning
Cable Television






Over its 200-year history, Castle Williams has been a mili- tary fortress, a prison for Confederate soldiers, a pig grazing pen and a teen center.

Now, the National Park Service hopes to turn the red sandstone fort on Governors Island into a museum. The full plans will take 20 years and $60 million to realize, but the N.P.S. recently started cleaning and stabilizing the three- story, doughnut-shaped building using a $6.4 million federal grant.

“Every layer of its use — as a fort, a barracks, a prison, a daycare center — every layer of that right now is still there,” said Michael Shaver, chief ranger on Governors Island with the N.P.S. “We’re just going to clean the tarnish off those layers so you can still make them out.”

Most recently, Castle Williams, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, has become a daytrip destina- tion. Drawn to the weathered facade and ghostly, crumbling courtyard, about 50,000 tourists and history afi cionados visited the castle last year, according to the N.P.S.

“It’s just weird and funky and very inviting,” Shaver said. “You see it on the ferry coming over here and it’s one of those things you want to check out.”

Castle Williams will be closed this summer because of the restoration work, which includes asbestos and lead abate- ment. When it reopens in May 2011, visitors will be able to explore not just the fort’s round courtyard but also the roof and some of the interior, which have never been open to the public.

The roof will offer sweeping views of New York Harbor, and a glimpse back in time at the impregnable defenses that protected the city for decades. Castle Williams, together with Fort Jay on Governors Island, Castle Clinton at the tip of Manhattan and forts on Ellis Island and Liberty Island, made an imposing impression on any would-be attackers, convincing the British not to enter the harbor during the War of 1812, Shaver said.

While the rectangular Fort Jay was more traditional, Castle Williams was designed to make an impression. Shaver likened it to a fist.

“It’s not a fort that’s [only] trying to protect itself,” Shaver said. “It’s a projection of strength out in New York Harbor that’s just daring people to come.”

Castle Williams was the brainchild of Col. Jonathan Williams, chief engineer for the U.S. Army and superinten- dent of West Point — and also, Shaver said, “a fort geek.” Williams traveled to France studying the forts, then returned to the United States in 1785 determined to reinterpret them in a modern way.

Castle Williams, which opened in 1811, was the physical expression of Williams’ pioneering ideas. While most forts were rectangular, Castle Williams was round, to provide full coverage of the harbor. And while other forts propped can- ons on top of walls, opening them to opposing fi re, Williams stacked his cannons vertically, sheltering them in stone case- ments, with walls 7 to 9 feet thick.

When Williams was designing his fort at the beginning of the 19th century, protecting New York City was an urgent task. Thirty years earlier, the British sailed into New York’s largely defenseless harbor during the Revolutionary War. The British used New York for their headquarters for eight years and did not leave until Evacuation Day in 1783.

After the war, the fl edgling American government priori- tized the security of its financial capital, building more than a dozen protective forts. Castle Williams was one of them.

The defenses came in handy during the War of 1812, when the British laid siege to New York Harbor but never tried to enter or attack Manhattan.

“They didn’t mess with the city like they’d done before,” Shaver said. “With all these forts working together, there was no way any reasonable man would try to do a naval invasion of New York. It just was not going to happen.”

was by Williams’ friends at the U.S. Navy. Williams was so proud of his design and eager to prove its strength that he invited the Navy in to test the fort’s defenses. Williams, the great-nephew of Benjamin Franklin, stayed in the castle while it was under fire. No one was hurt, and the Navy man- aged only to knock over one of the fort’s cannons, but not to destroy it.

Only one portrait survives of Williams, and it shows the castle in the background. Castle Williams is also imprinted on the buttons of the dress uniforms of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in tribute to Williams.