Daily News from New York, New York • 186

use $mihh ft Survival 8 xafi Km If, II II II II II II II Mil UU ZS with Graphic Building Systems a division of Starrett Housing received funding for four buildings through a Section 8 Demonstration Rehab Award. Financing was obtained through Huntoon Paige Associates Ltd. The National Corp. for Housing Partnerships agreed to purchase equity. The U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban Development is insuring and subsidizing. Residents Moved Residents of seven buildings have been moved ino three apartment houses while the four are being renovated this year. Additional funds are sought to renov i three more in the future. "I feel tickled to death, because my happiest years were here," said Mare-chalmeil Avant, an office worker and former performer who has lived with her husband Willie on the street since 1941. She is one of 40 families who stuck out the fight, where once there had been several hundred.

"A lot of good people moved out," she said. "But we're going to get young blood in again.1' grew up on the street from 1942 to 1957 was instrumental with Roy Miller, project director of the Milband-Frawley Circle Urban Renewal Area, in getting residents to trust the city and getting the city to rehabilitate instead of demolish. "This occasion is of particular significance to me," said Wilkinson, who moved from the street at age 15. The tenants, and even some city officials, agreed the residents had lived under agonizing conditions while fighting to save the street. After relocation officials gave them 90 days to move in early 1977, and the city took title to the land, the city stripped apartments as they became vacant and problem tenants were moved in in one case a woman with 50 dogs.

Rent Strike The residents organized, won support from their elected officials, and eventually conducted a legal yearlong rent strike, paying their rents to a judge instead of the city. In 1976, the residents were brought together with Settlement Housing Fund a nonprofit housing agency which, By GEORGE JAMES The long, eight-year battle ended with yellow, pink, and white streamers fluttering in the breeze like victory banners from the iron fence of a Harlem schoolyard on W. 111th St. And it ended with the sounds of Teddy Hardy and his fellow laborers across the street ripping out the interior of a five-story brick apartment building, the first step in the rehabilitation of at least four such buildings, and possibly seven. The people on the block between Fifth and Lenox Aves.

who had fought the city to renovate the buildings not tear them down as the city had planned had won. And last week, city officials joined them in a celebration. Theme of Speeches Speaker after speaker from the block, from the city housing bureaucracy and government sounded a theme: in such small ways, by fighting, often against hope, against official reasoning to preserve the decades-old social ties of one street is a community strengthened, and the strength flows throughout the city. "We feel by showing other people in Harlem that we did this, Harlem can be saved," said Katherine Gallop, a nurse who is president of the New 111th St. Association, the sponser, assisted by the Settlement Housing Fund.

"There is constitutional right. If you stand up for it, sensibly, decently, and with meaning, the government will listen to you." Federal Funding Four 60-year old tenements with their front entrance courtyards at 8-14, 16 22, 32-36, and 40-44 W. 111th St. will be rehabilitated with 99 apartments, ranging from one to four bedrooms at a cost of almost $4 million. Under Federal Section 8 funding, no tenants will be required to pay more than 25 of his or her income and in some cases, 15, said Marvin Wilkinson, director of Manhattan Development the Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

Wilkinson who by coincidence Cemetevy: Vandals Cause Wm a Vandals toppled and smashed about 100 headstones and a dozen archways in Lutheran Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens, over the weekend, causing more than $100,000 damage, police reported yes terday. Captain Harold Coleman, commander of the detective zone in- the area, said some youths, fortified by beer, "went on a rampage" Saturday night and vandalized the south portion of the cemetery at 67-29 Metropolitan Ave. Coleman said a superintendent of the cemetery, Philip Bub, discovered the overturned headstones. Bub told police that the gates to the cemetery were locked at 4 p.m. on Saturday and he discovered the damage at 8:30 a.m.

yesterday. Four-Foot Pipe Police came upon dozens of empty beer bottles in the cemetery and also found that vandals had broken Into a toolshed by breaking several windows. Near one of the overturned archways, police picked up a four-foot pipe, which they surmise was used to smash the headstones. Some of the archways were at least 10 feet high, a worker at the cemetery said. "It had to be a bunch of strong kids to do all that damage," he said.

Police were unable to determine if any equipment or tools were taken from the shed. Harry Danyluk He Talks Fast, And Runs Fast By GROVER RYDER A Peter Sellers, Pink Panther type holdup, replete with a bungling robber who had the last laugh on his way to freedom, was reported yesterday, by Nassay County police. The klutzy stickup man talked his way to freedom by smilingly declaring that his attempted holdup was really only a "sorority" prank. It wasn't until later that the would-be victims figured out that men don't usually belong to sororities. Crowded Restaurant The caper began at 5:30 a.m.

Saturday in Howard Johnson's Restaurant, East Norwich, L.I., which was crowded with early risers and later revelers. A young man entered, pulled his T-shirt up to cover his face except for his eyes and took his place on the cash register line. Breakfast eaters smiled and laughed. College-kid stuff, they thought. After all, C.W.

Post College is only a mile down the road on Route 25-A. Monica Hale, the cashier, and night manager Keith Ruppiko laughed right along with everyone else. But when the partially masked youth's turn came at the cash register he produced what appeared to be a gun and announced a holdup the smiles faded. Off Duty Guard About that time, 20-year-old Joel Berse, an off-duty private guard who had dropped by for breakfast, walked up and snapped handcuffs on the unknown youth. "Ah, heck man, it's only a sorority prank," the youth said, permitting the T-shirt to drop low enough to reveal a huge, boyish grin.

Berse released the cuffs, allowing the youth to put the gun, toy or otherwise, into his pocket, and then permitted him to walk back out the door, police said. The smiles returned until the youth broke into run, jumped into a car to-J Van News pnoR by Willi Anderson Cemetery administrators Angela Neville and Phil Bob checking damage caused by vandals. Tenants So Maury: deep tt the Srass! By MARTIN KING Scores of Tudor City residents demonstrated in a private park on 43d St. between First and Second Aves. yesterday to protest landlord Harry Helmsley's plan to uproot the project's parks and build apart versial issue, that of the labor cost "pass-along" rent increases.

McKean said the proposed "pass-along" requires payment of up to 7.5 in rent increases immediately, even though the law in question is being appealed and the decision is not due until October. Krupsak said that Gov. Carey has refused to act on the matter on the grounds that the law is unclear, but maintained that Carey "could protect the tenants of New York city with the stroke of a pen." She said Carey had the power to prevent the pass-along since" it's spelled out in black and white" in state legislation. ments on tne tana. "It's just plain wrong," said John McKean, president of the Tudor City Tenants Association.

"Helmsley knew when he bought Tudor City that the people of this community were promised perpetual enjoyment of these parks." Noting that a similar threat by Helmsley to build apartment units in the park space was thwarted In 1971, McKean said, "we're right back where we started from, and we're going to fight again to preserve these parks." Suggests Letter Campaign MCKean urged those at the rally to write their state representatives, Mayor Koch and others to protest the Helmsley plan, and to persuade their neighbors to do the same. Another speaker, Lt. Gov. Mary Anne Krupsak pledged her support to Tudor City tenants on another contro-. with a driver at the wheel, and careened around the corner and headed north on Route 106..