City fences off Allen Street Bathhouse to prevent trans artist from painting on its walls

On Tuesday afternoon, city workers arrived to erect a fence around the long-vacant Allen Street Bathhouse here at Delancey...

This was the city's latest heavy-handed tactic in the summer-long battle against unhoused trans artist Nadja Rose, who had been creating murals on the vacant bathhouse's walls and surrounding sidewalk space in recent months.

None of this pleased city officials (led by the Parks Department), who would dispatch sanitation trucks and the 7th Precinct to discard her belongings and art supplies. She would always return. There were also social-media reports that the city had her locked up "in the psych ward" several times. 

Observers (optimistically) wondered why the city couldn't use this as an opportunity to create some type of artist-in-residence program at this neglected space that has long been a favorite spot for taggers.

Her work prompted admiration from passersby here on the Allen Street Mall, a passage with an out-of-business Subway sandwich shop on one corner and a Starbucks on the other. (As for the old bathhouse, plans for a cafe in the structure date to early 2016.) 

Writer Jeremiah Moss has documented Rose's work here on Instagram...

 

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There haven't been any sightings of the artist since the fence went up, we're told. But she did leave some parting messages...