Top photo from May 2021
The wisteria outside 35 Stuyvesant St. at 10th Street is a purple paradise of flowering beauty each spring — much to the delight of local Instagrammers (and others!).
Unfortunately, the vines never came to a full bloom this season...
Thanks to Steven for the bottom two photos.
20 comments:
Was just wondering exactly about that the other day, while passing by.
OH NOOO
bad vibes man :(
Yes. I think we should be worried.
Someone needs to go throw some soil on it and feed it. Instead being sad tend it like we are supposed to, not just take a picture of its suffering. 🤦🏼♀️
It needs fed and some soil around the base, it still has life left. Look at the top, someone should tend to it, and help.
It's dead.
Looks diseased. Doubt if friable soil will help at this point. We've already had tons of rain last week. That vine was old decades ago. Cycle of Life..............
Owner of 23 Stuyvesant (for 60 years) once told me all those vines are used by the rats to climb up over the houses there.
Our building (a brownstone) once had wisteria climbing up the front façade. Eventually it grew INTO the apartment on the 3rd floor, doing damage there. And the "suckers" that attach the vine to the building damaged the façade; we had to remove it completely.
It would be nice if wisteria would grow on all of the new tall monstrosities and cause the horrible buildings to wither away.
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I live across the street. Half of this wisteria was chopped down a few months ago..by..it seemed, city employees, despite protests from people living in the building. Something about fire escapes was mentioned but there are no fire escapes there, just balconies. They cleared away the vine from the windows that have balconies. It is very sad.
"sucker" attached plants are not damaging to buildings, they are protective. (see "Ivy" League buildings)
Some types of crawler plants are NOT suckers, and instead grow 'roots' into the masonry of buildings. These are damaging to building facades, suckers are not.
Vines like English Ivy, Climbing Hydrangea, and Virginia Creeper all attach themselves to the sides of buildings via small velcro like roots. Wisteria, like Roses and Clematis, do not have exterior roots and needs to be trained on a support- otherwise they just grow around or on top of what ever is there. Unless the mortar is old and very loose hard to see how flowering vines can damage a building.
@8:22AM: I don't have a degree in horticulture, so perhaps "suckers" is the wrong technical term, but I know this: we had to have the ENTIRE brownstone façade of our building replaced and it cost a shit-load of $$$$. We are a small co-op and it was a huge financial hit to all of us. Now we do not permit *any* climbing vine of any sort in the front or the back of the building.
@9:45- Hard to say without seeing an engineering report (or two) but my guess is the damaged building facade was caused by old, defective brickwork that lacked Portland cement, plus other factors as well. I've seen Village brownstones that have been damaged by truck vibrations, esp buildings with old brick porches and English basements. Lack of sunlight, freeze/ thaw cycles etc can all contribute as well.
@1:51pm: Thanks, but at that time we consulted both a structural engineer and a professional engineer. There was no damage to the underlying brickwork nor the mortar holding the bricks in place.
Believe me, nobody living here wanted to have to re-do the front of the building, but we *did* have to re-do it. (And we don't have an English basement.)
The wisteria is growing on the fire escape. The brick work is in fine condition. The ground-floor masonry, though, needs repair.
Two days ago the building management company from 128 east 10th street hired a contractor to cut back this precious vine. They claim they had to do it to satisfy the insurance company. They work they did was extreme. It will take years for the vine to regrow. Send a complaint to Thomas Higgins 347-464-9738. This is Barbara Cochoran from Shark Tanks building. She doesn’t care care about the enjoyment others get every year when the Wisteria blooms. It’s all about the bottom line.🤬
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