Did NYPD Block Poor People from Walking Down a Public Street?

The entrance to 15 Central Park West.

Clyde Haberman, the New York Times metro columnist, found himself in a predicament at the recent Thanksgiving Parade. He attempted to walk to Central Park West from Broadway on 61st Street, but was told by police that the street offered no public access. The street is, of course, a public street, but was apparently being blocked off by officers to accommodate the Trump International Hotel and Tower, and 15 Central Park West, the ritzy condo building on 62nd street where bank executives go to bathe in hot tubs full of the cash they were loaned by the Treasury Department (or so we imagine).

The residents and guests there apparently didn’t want regular people just traipsing across the pavement in front of their buildings, though representatives for the buildings said closing off the streets was entirely the NYPD’s decision. One officer told Haberman that the street was closed off because of terrorism concerns, another said it had something to do with allowing access to disabled people. A more plausible answer: the streets were closed because they were being paved — with gold. How very 1908 of them.