Steven Meyerowitz
Steven Flanders
Date: November 3, 2025
From: Steven Meyerowitz
To: Steven Flanders
Good morning, Steve,
I was walking up Broadway from the Battery yesterday morning and got to City Hall Park – and saw the street sign [for Steve Flanders Square] in the attached photo.
What’s the story about this??????
Date: November 3, 2025
From: Steven Flanders
To: Steven Meyerowitz
I wish I could claim it was in my honor. But it’s about a unique namesake: he was a City Hall reporter, first for WCBS TV and for radio when he reached a certain age. Unlike every other such on the planet, he was beloved by the notables he covered. He died shortly after I arrived at the Second Circuit in 1980. Several times when I was with old City Hall hands, they would say, “I knew your namesake. He was a wonderful man.” But though I spoke with him a couple of times when we got each others’ messages, I never met him.
Date: November 3, 2025
From: Steven Meyerowitz
To: Steven Flanders
Hi, Steve,
Thanks for that explanation.
And now that you mention it, I do recall a Steve Flanders working at WCBS-all-news-radio. I used to listen to that station all the time back in the ’60s and ’70s, and was sad when it recently went out of business. If the reporter died in 1980, I probably didn’t make the connection when we first started the Quarterly a few years later….
Anyway, I still think a street should be named after you!!!!
Date: November 3, 2025
From: Steven Flanders
To: Steven Meyerowitz
Thanks for the suggestion, but. . . .
What’s especially notable is that Steve Flanders Square, the space between City Hall and where the old Post Office and Courthouse was, is not only one of the most prominent places in the city, it’s one that has special resonance to me. When Mayor Jimmy Walker held a ceremony to give some visiting dignitary the keys to the city, he was regularly interrupted by postal trucks grinding gears across the way, something neither he nor any succeeding mayor could control. This was the original impetus for construction of Cass Gilbert’s Foley Square courthouse.
One of my favorite among the many remarkable episodes in the old building: when Cass Gilbert won the grand prize in an 1899 Paris architectural competition for the Broadway-Chambers building, the plaque was addressed to:
Broadway Chambers
Etats-Unis
It arrived! Wouldn’t happen today.
