The 6th Street and Ave B Community Garden, NYC
I recently returned from a short trip to New York City. This was a purely personal trip so despite the cold I did what I love best, wandering the streets with my camera. My favourite part of the city is The Lower East Side, The East Village, and Alphabet City areas. This upper part of this area also happens to be the birthplace of the modern community and guerilla gardening here in North America. There are several imaginative and beautiful gardens scattered amongst the buildings that were born in the late 70’s and early 80’s out of the community’s desire to turn dangerous, abandoned waste spaces into safe and useful community spaces for the neighborhood. While locals and organizers have had to arduously fight against rising real estate value and gentrification to keep the gardens alive, a few have been granted park status by the city and remain in place. If you ever get a chance to visit New York I highly recommend getting a peek at some of the gardens. You can use this searchable map to locate and map out all of the gardens in the area.
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This is the 6th and Ave B Garden [Note: This photo was taken in May 2005], a massive garden that takes up the entire corner of a city block. The garden’s website chronicles its history and shows what the block looked like when it was just a pile of rubble and debris.
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Eddie’s Sculpture at the 6th and B Garden. This sculpture has created a lot of controversy. I was surprised to see it was still there just a few days ago.
- Unfortunately, the gardens were all closed for the winter but I still managed to take a few pictures by poking my lens through fences.
I was also fortunate enough to visit many of these gardens as a part of my book launch back in May 2005. You can see more pictures from that trip here.
More info:
January 28th, 2007 at 12:44 am
Gayla
I’m a member of the 6B garden! If you should ever come back I can let you in anytime! I live half a block away and work out of my apartment…which is also an art gallery.
Hanna Fushihara Aron
January 28th, 2007 at 10:49 am
That’s awesome Hanna! Wish I had known about your gallery. I must have walked by your place a few times.
I had a chance to go into the garden once back in May 2005 but it was for a photoshoot and I didn’t have any time to wander and take pictures.
I really hope I get a chance to go to NY during the growing season. It was a drag taking pictures and peeking through fences.
April 9th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
That’s all my old neck of the woods. My first garden in NYC was in the East Village, behind a tenant-owned building on 1st Avenue.
April 9th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
PS: And OASIS is a terrific resource. I’ve been using it for three years to research and document NYC land-use issues. I’ve used some of their maps on my blog.
April 30th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Thanks for mentioning my uncle Eddie Boros unfortunately he passed on April 27th but hopefully his statue will remain as a memory of him!
June 1st, 2007 at 8:13 am
I visited the 6th & Ave B garden last week and was overwhelmed by it’s beauty and sadness. I knew nothing about it or Eddie Boros until after I had been behind the gates for several minutes. I emptied my wallet at the donation station as a nice man was explaining the park and the sculpture to me. I live on six acres in the Hill Country of Texas but that park had more soul than anyplace I’ve been in a long, long time. I hope it and the sculpture remain forever.