Creator and musician Patti Smith joined New Yorkers this week in a rally to protest metropolis officers’ plans to destroy Elizabeth Road Backyard, a sculpture backyard tucked away within the busy Decrease Manhattan neighborhood of Nolita, to make approach for an reasonably priced housing growth for low-income seniors. After being denied protections below a legislation that grants artists the fitting to forestall the destruction of their work, the non-profit that manages the backyard is getting ready for the potential of eviction.
Smith carried out her 1988 track Individuals Have the Energy on the backyard’s Olmsted Brothers-designed iron gazebo on Tuesday (1 April). Smith—who, along with her collaborators Soundwalk Collective, exhibited at Kurimanzutto in Chelsea earlier this yr—has been one of many backyard’s most outspoken celeb supporters. She penned a letter final yr to New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams, asking him to name off town’s growth plans.
“The Backyard just isn’t solely an oasis of inexperienced house inside our metropolis, however really stands as a murals,” Smith wrote. “The hassle to put it aside is reflective of a mass effort to protect the pure and ever evolving character of New York Metropolis.”
Additionally current at Tuesday’s rally was Glee and Shiva Child actress Dianna Agron, who gave a speech in help of the backyard. Agron is married to the artist Harold Ancart.
‘This isn’t the top of the combat’
For greater than a decade, native activists have been preventing town’s plans to raze the roughly one-acre sculpture backyard to construct Haven Inexperienced, a proposed multi-use growth town needs to construct on the positioning.
In February, the Elizabeth Road Backyard nonprofit filed a lawsuit towards town arguing the backyard is a murals that ought to be protected by the Visible Artists Rights Act (VARA), handed in 1990. VARA is an modification to the US Copyright Act and grants artists some rights over their work, no matter possession, in particular circumstances. Final month, a decide denied the park’s defenders’ request for a preliminary injunction below VARA.
“Whereas we’re deeply dissatisfied on this determination, this isn’t the top of the combat,” the non-profit group stated in an announcement, including that it has filed an attraction. “We stay dedicated to defending the Backyard as a novel murals and an important group house, and we’ll proceed to pursue all authorized choices to cease its destruction.”
However even because the group pursues the federal attraction, the non-profit says it’s “getting ready for the likelihood that the Metropolis could shut public entry to Elizabeth Road Backyard and set up fencing”.
The backyard’s historical past
Whereas positioned on public metropolis land, since 1991 the plot the place the backyard is positioned has been leased out—first to the late gallerist Allan Reiver, who remodeled what was as soon as an deserted lot into an outside extension of his Elizabeth Road Gallery, positioned next-door. The backyard was first opened to the general public in 2005 by way of the gallery, and in 2013 Reiver constructed an entrance to the backyard outdoors for the general public to make use of after studying of town’s plans to develop the positioning. Right this moment, the backyard welcomes greater than 200,000 guests per yr, and round 400 volunteers assist run day by day programming on-site. Reiver died in 2021, and his son, Joseph Reiver, now leads the non-profit that manages the backyard’s day by day actions and continues his father’s combat to protect its existence.
Town’s proposed growth, Haven Inexperienced, would create 123 reasonably priced residential models for seniors, plus ground-level business house, workplaces for Habitat for Humanity—a accomplice within the growth—and a small quantity of publicly accessible inexperienced house on-site. The models can be held at reasonably priced rental charges for at the very least the primary 60 years, an often-criticised component of the deal.
Reiver and the Elizabeth Road Backyard non-profit have supplied town with quite a lot of proposed various growth websites, however proponents of growth say it isn’t a matter of constructing various housing— what New York wants is extra models, full cease. Town has reached a disaster level after a long time of failing to construct sufficient reasonably priced housing to maintain tempo with inhabitants and job progress.
“It’s not like we’re saying ‘Don’t construct within the neighbourhood.’ We’re simply saying ‘Don’t destroy a backyard so as to do what you wish to do,’” Reiver instructed The Artwork Newspaper final yr. “It’s a false alternative on the finish of the day.”
