In May 2008, Dr. Amy Gutmann, Penn President, met with students from the Harlem Village Academy to talk about student financial aid and the Penn Compact, Penn's efforts to increase access, integrate knowledge, and engage locally and globally with communit

But it's a priority for Toussaint, and it should be a priority for anyone who cares about a greenway around Manhattan. Except for the detour around the United Nations and the DOT staging area, this East Side route is nearly complete. Directly south of the big salt pile, a handful of homeless people sleep in the sand under tarps anchored to a cement wall. A few yards south of them, the older greenway starts up, with grass, trees, and fishermen. It's so close, this southward link to the rest of Manhattan, and so completely out of reach.

January 21, 2007
As East Harlem Develops, Its Accent Starts to Change
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and TANZINA VEGA

Inside a wooden shack set in a garden on East 117th Street, a group of Puerto Rican men, many of them in their 70s and 80s, are playing a spirited game of dominoes on a rainy winter afternoon. A painting of a woman wearing a burgundy shawl over a flamenco-style dress hangs on a wall, and in the garden, tomatoes, peppers, corn and culantro, an herb used in Caribbean cooking, grow in the summer.

But outside their little retreat, a thick dust, the pounding of hammers and the shouts of construction workers inundate the block, signaling the transformation of East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem or El Barrio (the neighborhood). Many see it changing from the Puerto Rican enclave it has been for decades to a more heterogeneous neighborhood with a significant middle-class presence, luxury condominiums and a Home Depot.

It is a familiar story of gentrification in New York City, but this one comes with a twist: the many newcomers who are middle-class professionals from other parts of the city are joining a growing number of working-class Mexicans and Dominicans.