Tuesday, September 22, 2026 · No. 40
The president has come and gone, and Tuesday hands the neighborhood back to itself — what Monday's Gracie Mansion meeting actually produced turns out to live in a Queens rail yard, of all places. Closer to home: the H Mart sign is finally up on East 86th Street, and Carl Schurz Park has put an October date on the calendar.
The Lead
Trump leaves Gracie Mansion praising Mamdani — and a Queens housing plan moving
Monday's meeting ended outside Gracie Mansion, where President Trump told reporters he wants Zohran Mamdani 'to be a great mayor,' per Upper East Site, and said the mansion 'feels like a home,' per amNY. The substance came out of Queens, not Yorkville: amNY reports the two opened technical talks between City Hall and the White House on the mayor's $21 billion federal funding pitch to build 12,000 homes above Sunnyside Yard, a plan Gothamist reports the pair advanced Monday — Trump called the project 'a big job.' On our blocks, the visit mostly looked like barricades: NYPD locked down the streets around the mansion Monday while neighbors waited, per Upper East Site's street-level dispatch, which described the mood as annoyance and skepticism. By this morning, the motorcade is someone else's story.
via Upper East Site
Openings & Closings
The H Mart sign is up on East 86th Street
Signage is finally installed outside the long-awaited H Mart at 223 East 86th Street, between Second and Third avenues, per Upper East Site, which has been tracking the Korean grocery chain's build-out at the address. One thing the coverage does not include: an opening date. We'll print one when H Mart says one.
via Upper East Site
This Week
Mark the calendar: the Harvest Festival returns to Carl Schurz Park Oct. 18
The Carl Schurz Park Conservancy's 11th annual Harvest Festival runs Sunday, Oct. 18, 1 to 3 p.m. on the Mayor's Lawn at East End Avenue and 88th Street, per the Conservancy's events page and NYC Parks' listing: a pumpkin patch and pumpkin decorating, a Spooky Trail, arts and crafts, and a family concert from Patrick and the Rock-a-Silly Band. Free and open to all ages; Time Out and Mommy Poppins carry the same details. Nearer-term, Saturday still holds the free 7:30 p.m. Movies Under the Stars screening at Samuel Seabury Playground and Cooper Hewitt's drop-in sketching — both covered in Monday's paper.
via Carl Schurz Park Conservancy
Corrections
For the record: a school-day count in Monday's paper
Monday's edition (#39), as first published — it was live on the site for roughly a quarter hour before a same-morning standards fix — said families had 'three full weeks of uninterrupted school' before the Oct. 12 holiday. The correct count is 14 school days: Sept. 22–25, Sept. 28–Oct. 2 and Oct. 5–9 — two full weeks plus a four-day week. A count parents plan around should arrive correct the first time.
via The Yorkville Ledger
Yorkville, Remembered
Yorkville's 89th Street was once the end of the line
Before the Second Avenue Subway, Yorkville rode the Third Avenue El. The elevated line's station at East 89th Street and Third Avenue opened December 9, 1878 as the line's original northern terminus — for three weeks, until the tracks were extended to 129th Street on December 30, 1878. Built starting in 1875 by the New York Elevated Railway Company, the Third Avenue El outlasted Manhattan's other elevated lines by more than a decade; its Manhattan service ended May 12, 1955, when all service south of the Bronx's 149th Street stopped, and Bronx trains ran until 1973.
source: Wikipedia
With the barricades down and the motorcade someone else's traffic problem, the biggest open question on East 86th Street is once again the one hanging over a supermarket door: fine, the sign is up — but when?