Via Public Domain Pictures and Flickr cc (L); Via Wiki Commons (R)

• Despite calls to remove it, the Christopher Columbus statue in Columbus Circle has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. [NYP]
• Visit the last chess shop in NYC. [The Atlantic]
• Amy Poehler has opened a wine store in Park Slope. [Eater]
• How Staten Island is keeping brick-and-mortar retail alive and repurposing its shopping malls. [CO]
• MTA president Andy Byford announced the appointment of an “internationally renowned signaling expert.” [MTA]
• Free winter weekdays have begun at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden and will run through February. [Brownstoner]

Frida Kahlo self portrait via Wiki Commmons (L); Google Street View of Continental Bar (R)

• Check out this year’s holiday window displays. [Untapped Cities]
• Meet the man who provides picture-perfect avocados to 120+ NYC restaurants. [Eater]
• A huge Frida Kahlo exhibit will open at the Brooklyn Museum in February. [WSJ]
• And a retrospective on New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast is open at the SVA Gallery. [NYT]
• Citi Bike will offer membership discounts through the end of the year. [6sqft inbox]
• After 27 years, the East Village’s iconic Continental Bar (where five shots of anything go for $12) announced it will close on December 15th. [NYP]
• Dreamland Roller Rink will open a massive outpost at Industry City. [Brooklyn Daily Eagle]

The Shed via Diller Scofidio +Renfro (L); Ikea in Red Hook via Wiki Commons (R)

• Björk will premiere her “most elaborate stage concert yet’ during the inaugural season of Hudson Yards’ performance venue the Shed. [Gothamist]
• Ikea is looking to open six mixed-use developments in the next two years, and NYC is on their list. [CO]
• At $61,000 per Amazon job, New York pays twice what Virginia does. [Business Insider]
• Get a look inside the Miami Beach apartment where late starchitect Zaha Hadid lived. [Dezeen]
• A Crown Heights street corner was named after Dr. Susan Maria Smith McKinney-Steward, the country’s first female African-American doctor. [Brooklyn Eagle]
• Apparently, 65 percent of Americans would like an alternative to turkey this Thanksgiving. [NY Post]

Rendering of 99 Hudson Street via China Overseas America, Inc. (L); Photo via Queens International Night Market on Facebook

• Public observation decks at New York City skyscrapers are having a moment. [WSJ]
• Roughly 33,000 new apartments will be delivered in Manhattan by 2021. [Crain’s]
• MTA hires two dozen station managers to keep platforms clean and enhance straphanger customer service. [MTA]
• The Queens International Night Market returns for its fall season this Saturday. [TimeOut]
• A new pop-art museum in the Greenwich Village highlights the “ineffectiveness of broken windows policing” with performances and installations. [CityLab]
• More than 320,000 high school students in NYC will receive S’well reusable bottles with the goal of displacing more than 54 million single-use plastic bottles. [Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office]
• 99 Hudson Street surpasses 30 Hudson Street as the tallest tower in New Jersey. [YIMBY]

Via 6sqft (L); Via WNYC/Flickr (R)

• The New York Blood Center is holding nearly 100 blood drives across the NYC metro region to honor those who lost their lives on 9/11. [Metro NY]
• First came the two Targets, now a Marshalls is opening next to Katz’s. Is the Lower East Side “already gone” to gentrification? [NYDN]
• A guide for NYC residents to voting in Thursday’s primaries. [NYC Votes]
• 6sqft photographers James and Karla Murray have an Instagram of vintage storefronts that is pure NYC nostalgia. [Vogue]
• Speaking of storefronts… here’s a panoramic view of the staggering numbers of vacant storefronts along the city’s once-popular retail corridors. [NYT]
• London has tested out several ways to cool its Tube stations. Can the MTA follow suit? [Vice]

Bedford Union Armory Redevelopment rendering by JM Zoning; A conceptual rendering of the pool via Brooklyn Bridge Park (R)

• Governor Cuomo announced that his office will fund the $15 million Carey Gabay Community Center at Crown Heights’ Bedford-Union Armory development. [Curbed]
• In 2011, the city introduced green cabs as a way to service areas where yellow cabs typically wouldn’t travel. That same year, Uber began operating in NYC. [NYT]
• The Hunters Point South ferry landing has been out of service for almost all of August, and it’s probably not reopening any time soon. [LIC Post]
• In the most bizarre marketing campaign ever, Adidas released a new sneaker inspired by NYC bodegas because they’re “vibrantly colored.” [Sneaker News]
• Sixty-three years after it was launched as an alternative weekly newspaper, the Village Voice has ceased all operations. [Gothamist]
• The MTA added permanent “Respect” tributes to Aretha Franklin at the Franklin Avenue subway station. [Untapped Cities]
• On September 12th and 16th, Brooklyn Bridge Park will hold community meetings about their plan to build a pool at Squibb Park. [BK Bridge Park]

A photo of the Malbone Street Wreck on Nov. 1, 1918, courtesy of the New York Transit Museum (L); Via NYC Ferry (R)

• On Nov. 1, 1918, 100 lives were lost when a Brooklyn Rapid Transit employee lost control of a train at the Prospect Park station. The event was so horrific that the name of the street was changed so New Yorkers would not be reminded of it. [NYP]
• Eight unique ways to celebrate Labor Day weekend in NYC. [Untapped Cities]
• The connection is unclear, but SpikedSeltzer is giving out 60 bicycles between today and Thursday to residents affected by the L train shutdown. [Bushwick Daily]
• The city released a framework for the Gowanus rezoning in June, but local developers are concerned it doesn’t allow for great enough density to offset construction costs. [Crain’s]
• The NYC Ferry’s Lower East Side route, the sixth and final route, launches today. It connects Long Island City, the LES, and Lower Manhattan in 32 minutes. [Office of the Mayor]
• A new study shows that conditions at NYCHA units have remained in a deteriorated state over the past four years, while private apartments have improved. [NYDN]
• Foundation work has begun for Thomas Heatherwick’s High Line-straddling “bubble” condo towers. [CityRealty]

Via Pexels (L) ; Flower District via Flickr/cc (R)

• The city will preserve 669 Section 8 apartments for 40 years. They’re located in “high-cost neighborhoods”–Williamsburg, Harlem, the East Village–“where the majority of similar buildings have converted to market-rate.” [NYC HPD]
• Twenty percent of dwelling units currently under construction in New York City are in a hotel. [TRD]
• Once a $120 million engine, NYC’s Flower District is being killed off by competition, construction and ICE. [Bloomberg]
• The Museum of Ice Cream, the Museum of Pizza, the Color Factory–how do the city’s new influx of pop-up museums find real estate? [Commercial Observer]
• Essex Crossing’s Target is now open! [The Lo-Down]
• And so is the new Four Seasons restaurant after a two-year hiatus and a $30 million buildout. [Gothamist]