With the scaffolding slowly coming down from a retrofitted P.S. 109, East Harlem residents are getting their first view at an affordable-housing project that stands in contrast to other such digs in the neighborhood.  Just a stone's throw from the city's postwar public housing complexes on Third Avenue and East 99th Street, the collegiate Gothic-style building, designed by Charles B.J. Snyder in 1898, is being revealed as a scaled-down château, with refurbished gargoyles and buff-colored brick gleaming for the first time in decades.  The school closed in the mid-1990s after falling into disrepair.  But this won't be fancy housing for up-and-comers.  The $52.2 million project—co-developed by the Minneapolis-based Artspace, which acquired the building in 2012 for $1, and Operation Fightback, a community developer in El Barrio—will offer 90 units of affordable housing to qualified artists through a program administered by the city's Department of Housing, Preservation & Development.  The project received $24 million in federal low-income housing tax credits.  It is the first development in New York City for Artspace, which has 35 similar projects across the country, including ones in Patchogue on Long Island and in Buffalo.  With its more than 1,100 residential units, the organization gives housing preferences to income-qualified artists and local residents who, chosen by committee, can live in the subsidized housing in perpetuity.  Lana Bortolot   Read more and see pictures at http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304512504579493510426449236

In the mid 1400s, the Ottoman Turks took control of the Middle East.  This prevented the European powers from traveling to Asia via land routes and so it spurred interest in a water route to Asia.  The first to attempt such a voyage was Christopher Columbus in 1492.  In 1497, King Henry VII of Britain sent John Cabot to search for what began to be known as the Northwest Passage (as named by the British).  All attempts over the next few centuries to find the Northwest Passage failed.  Sir Frances Drake and Captain James Cook, among others, attempted the exploration.  Henry Hudson attempted to find the Northwest Passage and while he did discover Hudson Bay, has crew mutinied and set him adrift.  Finally, in 1906 Roald Amundsen from Norway successfully spent three years traversing the Northwest Passage in an ice-fortified ship.  In 1944 a Royal Canadian Mounted Police sergeant made the first single-season crossing of the Northwest Passage.  Since then, many ships have made the trip through the Northwest Passage.  Read about geography and future of the Northwest Passage at http://geography.about.com/od/specificplacesofinterest/a/northwestpassag.htm

Constantino Brumidi (1805–1880) is best known for the murals he painted in the United States Capitol over a 25-year period.  His artistic vision was based on the wall paintings of ancient Rome and Pompeii and on the classical revivals that occurred in the Renaissance and Baroque periods and in the early 19th-century.  Brumidi was born in Rome before Italy was a nation.  Beginning at age 13, he studied for 14 years at the Academy of St. Luke and was trained in the full range of painting mediums, including true fresco, and possibly in sculpture.  He achieved a mastery of the human figure and learned how to create the appearance of three-dimensional forms on flat surfaces, an effect called trompe l’oeil (“fool the eye”).  Arriving in New York in September 1852, Brumidi immediately applied for citizenship, which he was granted in 1857.  He undertook private portrait and domestic commissions as well as painting altarpieces and murals in numerous churches.  Beginning in 1855, Brumidi decorated walls and ceilings in the U.S. Capitol Building, first demonstrating his skill with a trial fresco in H-144 (now the House Appropriations Committee Room).  He worked with teams of artists to carry out his designs, executing all of the true frescoes himself.  Brumidi designed and executed murals for the Hall of the House of Representatives (now in H-117), the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs room (S-127), the Senate Military Affairs Committee room (S-128), the Senate Library (S-211, later the post office), the office of the Senate Sergeant at Arms (S-212), the Senate Reception Room (S-213), the President’s Room (S-216), other office spaces, and the Senate first-floor corridors (now known as the Brumidi Corridors).  Brumidi worked intensively at the U.S. Capitol through the early 1860s and sporadically after 1865, adding murals into the 1870s.  His major contributions are the monumental canopy and frieze of the new Capitol Dome. In the canopy over theRotunda he painted The Apotheosis of Washington in 1865.  Brumidi began painting the frieze depicting major events in American history in 1878 but died on February 19, 1880, with the work less than half finished.  Filippo Costaggini carried out Brumidi’s remaining designs between 1881 and 1889; the entire frieze was only completed in 1953.  Explore Capitol Hill at http://www.aoc.gov/constantino-brumidi

Petrus is a Latin name derived from the Greek meaning "rock", and is the common English prefix "petro-" used to describe rock-based substances, like petros-oleum or "rock oil."

examples of names:  Peter, Pietro, Pero, Piero (diminutive Perino), Pier, Pedro, Peder, Per, Pierre, Piera (diminutive Pierina)

The Museum of the City of New York was founded in 1923 by Henry Collins Brown, a Scottish-born writer with a vision for a populist approach to the city.  The Museum was originally housed in Gracie Mansion, the future residence of the Mayor of New York.  Hardinge Scholle succeeded Henry Brown in 1926 and began planning a new home for the Museum.  The City offered land on Fifth Avenue on 103rd-104th Streets and construction for Joseph H. Freedlander’s Georgian Colonial-Revival design for the building started in 1929 and was completed in 1932.  During the next few decades, the Museum amassed a considerable collection of exceptional items, including several of Eugene O’Neill’s handwritten manuscripts, a complete room of Duncan Phyfe furniture, 412 glass negatives taken by Jacob Riis and donated by his son, a man’s suit worn to George Washington’s Inaugural Ball, and the Carrie Walter Stettheimer dollhouse, which contains a miniature work by Marcel Duchamp.  Today the Museum’s collection contains approximately 750,000 objects, including prints, photographs, decorative arts, costumes, paintings, sculpture, toys, and theatrical memorabilia.  http://mcny.org/content/about-city-museum  Browse through map collection to find Map of property belonging to Clement C. Moore at Greenwich in the City of New York and Map of the Stuyvesant Property known as Petersfield Farm on p. 1 of 16 at http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWTOWJ37&SMLS=1&RW=1440&RH=717  To search fewer than the five boroughs, place check(s) at list on left of screen. 

Easter side dishes:  Honey Ginger Rhubarb Sauce, Endive and Radicchio Salad with Lemon Pepper Vinaigrette, Roasted Mushrooms and Asparagus in Mustard Vinaigrette from  Mary Bileyu   Find pictures and recipes at http://www.toledoblade.com/Food/2014/04/15/Easter-resolutions.html

The Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez popularized magical realism in Latin American literature by writing fantastical novels that drew on the folk tales and ghost stories he had heard as a child on Colombia's poor, sun-baked Caribbean coast.  Mr. García Márquez, who died in his Mexico City home at age 87 on April 17, 2014 was best known for his 1967 masterpiece, "One Hundred Years of Solitude," which recounted the travails of the abundant and obsessive Buendía clan.  Translated into dozens of languages and selling 30 million copies, the book is considered literature's exemplar of magical realism, generating countless imitations and inspiring a generation of writers in Latin America and beyond.  Though Mr. García Márquez didn't invent the technique, he became the leading exponent of the style, which balances dreamlike, fantastical vignettes with sharply focused realism, all of it solemnly delivered through an eccentric cast of whimsical characters.  When he did learn, Aracataca, with its infernal heat and almond trees, was transformed into the magical town of Macondo in "One Hundred Years of Solitude."  The novel's historic sweep and timeless writing helped Mr. García Márquez win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.  Though Mr. García Márquez has said "Autumn of the Patriarch" was his best book and readers gravitated to "Love in the Time of Cholera," it was "One Hundred Years of Solitude" that first cemented his fame.  Some critics in Latin America said it was the most important book in the Spanish language since Don Quixote, and the American author and critic William Kennedy called the novel "the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race."  Juan Forero   http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304810904579507753552411652?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304810904579507753552411652.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1137  April 18, 2014  On this date in 1848, the American victory at the battle of Cerro Gordo opened the way for invasion of Mexico.  In 1906, an earthquake destroyed much of San Francisco.  In 1912, the Cunard liner RMS Carpathia brought 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic to New York City.