Tuesday, March 6, 2012

The campaign to 'imagine a park' at 51 Astor Place

A few weeks ago, Jeremiah first pointed out the stickers that someone put on the plywood at 51 Astor Place, one day to be home to a black-glass tower.

[JVNY]

Since then, the campaign has evolved... fewer words, same sentiment... now in sticker, marker and stencil form...



7 comments:

elyse said...

Great idea. I've written complaint emails to all parties involved in that black tower of doom & gloom monstrosity. God (or whatever) save our East Village!

Tom said...

Reminds me of when John Lennon died in 1980. Someone painted the word "IMAGINE" in white letters on the Astor Place Cube, and it stayed up there for about a month without any other postings or graffiti on the Cube. Wish I had taken a picture.

BagelGuy said...

I imagine that park almost every day as I walk home from work. It should be a park and that bank across the street should foot the bill. It's the least they can do after all we've done for them.

Anonymous said...

I rode by the other day and marveled at the view now that the building's gone, it's a pretty sweet EV skyline looking at the Cooper Building, Wanamaker's, Saint Mark building and the Starbucks and Walgreen's buildings. Not gonna happen but it would be nice if we could keep the open space.

Anonymous said...

its easy to "imagine", someone will have to put up the money to buy this land from the developer to do so. Do you have that much cash on hand?

Anonymous said...

Never, never going to happen. Put your energy into Ruppert Park on the UES.

Richard said...

Even if it's too late for this site, drawing public attention to such a high-profile failure may help prevent a future one from happening.

I walk past the site every day, and ever since the old building came down it's struck me every time just how many different streets converge on that block; anything you put there is going to be the central focus of the area without having to try. Only in retrospect do we see that it should have been a park or public space of some sort.