Friday, September 11, 2026 · No. 31
Twenty-five years ago today, the towers fell, and this neighborhood's losses were not abstract — nine of them came out of one firehouse on East 85th Street. A remembrance ceremony is listed for 4pm this afternoon; the Maloneys, mother and daughter, look back in a new Upper East Site piece we point you to below. Also this morning: a new Legionnaires' cluster in the South Bronx lands while our own outbreak's tower still has no name, the Patis closure sits against the chain's bankruptcy file, and we owe you a corrections note from yesterday. Here's your Friday.
The Lead
Twenty-five years on, the East Side remembers at 4pm
Former Upper East Side Rep. Carolyn Maloney and her daughter Virginia recall living through September 11 in a 25th-anniversary piece from Upper East Site. The neighborhood's own observance is this afternoon: Community Board 8's calendar lists the Lighting the Way East Side 9/11 Remembrance Ceremony for 4pm today. As we noted yesterday, the board's listing gives the date and time but no venue we could confirm by press time — check CB8's calendar before heading out. Our history corner below is for the nine from East 85th Street.
via Upper East Site
Around the Neighborhood
A new Legionnaires' cluster in the South Bronx — and our outbreak's tower still has no name
A Legionnaires' disease cluster in the Bronx's Melrose and Morrisania neighborhoods has killed one person and sickened five, the city's Health Department said Thursday, per Gothamist, with NBC New York confirming the case count. That cluster is in the South Bronx, not here — but it lands while the source of this summer's Upper East Side outbreak, which sickened 94 people and killed 11 of them as of the Health Department's August 28 update, still has not been publicly named, and the city's effort to match Legionella from patients against cooling-tower samples remains unresolved. We'll keep asking.
via Gothamist
Talk of the Neighborhood
Behind the Patis closure: a chain still working through bankruptcy
Patis Bakery has closed its Upper East Side shop at 1311 Lexington Avenue — its second exit in two years — and Upper East Site ties the closing to competition from Fellini Coffee nearby. The fuller public record adds context: Patis, which the Jewish Telegraphic Agency called NYC's largest and buzziest kosher bakery chain when it filed for bankruptcy protection in June 2024, closed two locations that summer, including Times Square, per JTA, and shut its Financial District shop this April, per YeahThatsKosher. Upper East Site's headline puts the closing 'amid Fellini competition'; the wider public record is a chain that has been shedding locations since its 2024 filing. None of the sources links this closing to the bankruptcy. (1311 Lexington sits a block west of our line; the intrigue travels.)
via Upper East Site
Corrections
For the record: yesterday's Whole Foods lead and the MYKA timeline
Yesterday's edition (#30), as first published, placed an existing Whole Foods at Lexington and 61st Street — the chain's other two Upper East Side stores are at 1551 and 1175 Third Avenue — and the MYKA item said we first reported the chain's UES plans on Sunday, when that item ran Monday, in #28. Both were fixed the same morning by our standards desk; both had been live on the site, so our bar says they're owed this note.
via The Yorkville Ledger
This Week
Roughly 100 artists return to East End Avenue this weekend
The Gracie Square Art Show, the juried outdoor fair on East End Avenue between 84th and 88th, runs Saturday and Sunday, 10am to 5pm, with roughly 100 artists, kids' drawing and painting workshops in the Catbird Playground both mornings, and proceeds funding Carl Schurz Park restoration, per the Conservancy — rain or shine. Free, and about as kid-friendly as an art fair gets. It shares the weekend with the last laps of pool season: John Jay's free outdoor pools, just south of our line at East 77th and Cherokee Place, close Sunday.
via Carl Schurz Park Conservancy
92NY opens its dance season with a Cuban story
92NY's Harkness Dance Center opens its 2026–27 season Saturday, September 19 at 7pm in Kaufmann Concert Hall with 'The Essence of Us: A Cuban Story' — a Nel Shelby-directed documentary on Cuba's Malpaso Dance Company paired with a live Ballet Hispánico New York performance, with tickets listed from $45 on 92NY's own event page. That's 1395 Lexington, a block west of our line — and eight days out, so there's still time to plan around it.
via 92NY
Yorkville, Remembered
Yorkville's firehouse lost nine of its own on 9/11
The firehouse at 159 East 85th Street, between Lexington and Third Avenues — a block west of our line — has been home to FDNY Engine Company 22 since the house went up in 1910; Ladder Company 13 shares it. On September 11, 2001, nine of its members did not come home: four from Engine 22 and five from Ladder 13 — Capt. Walter Hynes, Thomas Casoria, Michael Elferis, Thomas Hetzel, Vincent Kane, Dennis McHugh, Martin McWilliams, Thomas Sabella and Gregory Stajk. Memorial stones engraved with the nine names sit in gardens around the neighborhood, where they remain twenty-five years on.
source: Wikipedia
If you find yourself with a quiet minute at four o'clock today, the neighborhood will be having one too. And when the weekend asks what's next, it has already answered itself: art on East End, one last swim at John Jay. Twenty-five years is a long time; nine stones still sit in neighborhood gardens, and the weekends have gone on filling themselves around them.