Photos by Stacie Joy
A new community space is now open outside the Lillian Wald Houses on Avenue D at Third Street ... the result of a long, resident-led effort to bring life to a patch of lawn that had sat fenced off and unused for years.
Last week, neighbors, NYCHA residents and the Design Trust for Public Space gathered for a ribbon-cutting for Opening the Edge, a project first proposed more than a decade ago by artist Jane Greengold.
She said she was inspired to pursue this project after seeing fences around the green spaces at NYCHA housing, and then residents bringing their own chairs to sit on the sidewalks outside these areas.
Since 2014, residents and local partners have held community meetings, workshops and walk-throughs to imagine what this space could be and how it should function.
The finished design, created in collaboration with Davies Toews Architecture, The PARC Foundation and NYCHA, includes new benches, tables, lighting, and a small raised platform for performances.
Paths now run through the site, and the biggest change of all: the fence is gone.
