To the Editor:
In an article about the plan to rebuild the Ramaz Lower School [“Neighbors to Synagogue: Enough With the High-Rise,” July 30], I was quoted accurately, but the meaning of a statement I made could be understood out of context by some readers.
I said that my friend Lo van der Valk of the Carnegie Hill Neighbors community group “was a little bit out of his element” in regard to the planned construction of the school on East 85th Street.
I was not referring to his general expertise or his capacity to speak with authority on land-use issues, as some may have concluded. Rather, I was referring to the fact that Carnegie Hill is a landmark district in the upper East 90’s along Madison Avenue—a low-scale neighborhood containing many of the city’s preeminent landmarks—where issues have little in common with those faced by the school, which is located just one block from the intersection of East 86th Street and Lexington Avenue, with its multiscreen theaters, big box department stores and residential towers.
Shelly Friedman
Manhattan
