The Journal News from White Plains, New York • Page 14

Wednesday, Apnl 13, 1988 B6 The Journal-News, Rockland County, N.Y. Compromise would keep Indian Museum in NYC Senators announce plan to split collection between Custom House, current site But no sooner was the plan announced than one component the Smithsonian Institution raised objections. Under the proposal, the bulk of the collection would move into the Custom House in lower Manhattan, while its current upper Manhattan site remains open and Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, D-Hawaii, pursues a plan for a National Museum of the American Indian in Washington.

The national museum would be part of the Smithsonian Institution and have borrowing privileges from the New York Indian museum. "Instead of one museum, we get three," Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan, said at a news conference to announce the plan. He was flanked by Inouye, who is chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs, and Reps.

Charles Rangel and Ted Weiss, both However, Smithsonian Secretary Robert McC. Adams, who was not at the news conference, later issued a statement calling the Smithsonian's association with the plan "unwise and unworkable." The plan which amends legislation introduced last year would authorize a 99-year lease of the Custom House, which would become the museum's primary location. The uptown site, at 155th Street and Broadway, would become what Rangel called "the jewel in the crown;" the building is in his district. Roland Force, director of the Museum of the American Indian, who attended the news conference, said while he did not expect the uptown site to be able to pay for itself, "if the powers that be in government, city and state, want it kept open, which they apparently do, we think they will undertake the necessary (financial) responsibility." The Museum of the American Indian has long been starved for space, visitors and funding. The building in a decaying neighborhood is too small to display more than about 1 percent of the million-artifact collection at a time, so most of the objects have languished in a Bronx warehouse.

The agreement unveiled yesterday is also predicated on the financial backing of the state and city of New York for a portion of construction and future operating costs of the Custom House. The city and state have pledged $13 million each for renovation of the building. The Associated Press WASHINGTON It sounds like a physical impossibility, but the New York City-based Museum of the Indian, which has long been searching for a more spacious home, would move and stay in the same place under a compromise solution unveiled yesterday. Pachyderms picnic in Central Park The Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) It was a rare sight, even by New York standards 19 elephants parading through midtown Manhattan yesterday on their way to a Central Park picnic. Burly hardhats working on new skyscrapers lay down their tools, storekeepers left their shops, shoppers paused to gawk and cheer as the elephants briskly walked up Eighth Avenue from Madison Square Garden.

The event, the first midday circus elephant parade through Manhattan in more than a decade, was staged to publicize the Ringling Bros, and Barnum Bailey Circus and to exercise the animals. Led by Ringmaster Jim Ragona, carrying brightly clad showgirls and flanked by clowns, the elephants entered the park's Great Lawn to the cheers of schoolchildren for a feast of carrots, cabbage, celery and bagels. REGIONAL BRIEFS FROM JOURNAL-NEWS WIRES Police disable bombs at highway rest area RIDGEFIELD, N.J. State police demolitions experts doused and disabled three powerful canister bombs yesterday at a New Jersey Turnpike rest area and arrested a man for possession of explosives, police said. Lt.

Barry Roberson, a spokesman for the state police, said the bombs and some leftover explosives were discovered in the car of man attempting to flee a trooper early yesterday at the Vince Lombardi Rest Area near Interchange 18 of the turnpike. Roberson said after the trooper noticed the bombs, he closed off a portion of the rest area and called for assistance from the state police bomb and explosives investigative team who used a water cannon to saturate the bombs and render them inoperable. N.J. theatre home to Oscar winner MONTCLAIR, N.J. The phone didn't stop ringing at the Whole Theatre yesterday, the day after Olympia Dukakis won an Oscar as best supporting actress for her role in "Moonstruck." Dukakis is co-founder and producing artistic director at the 199-seat non-profit theater, and just Saturday finished playing the lead in "The Rose Tattoo" to wrap up the theatre's season.

Dukakis is scheduled to return to New Jersey on Friday and begin work on next season's theater schedule. N.J. water supply slightly below normal Reservoir levels in New Jersey are slightly below normal this spring but that's no indication that drought conditions will mar the summer of 1988, officials said yesterday. Several communities, however, have decided to institute water rationing to handle the expected high demand of the warmer summer months. James Staples, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said the 12 reservoirs that the department monitors in northern New Jersey were 94.6 percent full at the end of March.

"It's pretty good but the normal would be 98.4 percent. That's attributed to the average rainfall in March being 3.96 inches'but we got 2.12 inches," he said. The Associated Press New York City Mayor Edward I. Koch feeds a bagel to an elephant from the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus during a lunchtime picnic Tuesday in New York's Central Park. "What I like about these elephants is that they're After the picnic, the elephants, walking tail in New York elephants," said Mayor Edward I.

Koch as trunk and followed by a pair of street sweepers, he poked food into the maw of a huge beast named paraded back down Ninth Avenue to prepare for an Jewel. "They like bagels." evening performance. Crumbling Williamsburg Bridge not aging gracefully section of Brooklyn and the Lower East Side of Manhattan. They did, at least, until the past few days, when the city Transportation Department closed all but four of the Williamsburg's eight lanes of traffic and suspended service on the two subway lines that cross the bridge. The city acted after inspectors discovered such extensive corrosion that they feared the bridge might collapse.

Now a vastly enlarged team of more than 60 Associated Press NEW YORK It was built for bicycles and horse-drawn buggies, but the Williamsburg Bridge has had to Scarry a much heavier load for most of its 85 years. one of America's busiest commuter bridges is falling apart. The culprits are decades of rust and the daily 'rumblings of more than 100,000 cars and 420 subway trains that ferry commuters between the Williamsburg inspectors is being deployed to determine the extent of the problem. "We're finding that, yes, there is corrosion, yes, the bridge is worse than what we imagined," said Chuck Carlson, deputy commissioner of the state Department of Transportation. What has happened to the Williamsburg is hardly Please see BRIDGE, B8 "IT HAS TO BE SEEN TO BE SOLD" ISP LA YS INNOVATIVE DECOR for Stores Office Home The Local Resource For All Your Window Or Interior Display Visual Needs Seasonal Non-Seasonal Trim Props Fixtures Grids Mannequins Forms I rx 1 irc; ism.

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