Author and musician Patti Smith joined New Yorkers this week in a rally to protest city officials’ plans to destroy Elizabeth Street Garden, a sculpture garden tucked away in the busy Lower Manhattan neighborhood of Nolita, to make way for an affordable housing development for low-income seniors. After being denied protections under a law that grants artists the right to prevent the destruction of their work, the non-profit that manages the garden is preparing for the possibility of eviction.
Smith performed her 1988 song People Have the Power at the garden’s Olmsted Brothers-designed iron gazebo on Tuesday (1 April). Smith—who, with her collaborators Soundwalk Collective, exhibited at Kurimanzutto in Chelsea earlier this year—has been one of the garden’s most outspoken celebrity supporters. She penned a letter last year to New York City Mayor Eric Adams, asking him to call off the city’s development plans.
“The Garden is not only an oasis of green space within our city, but truly stands as a work of art,” Smith wrote. “The effort to save it is reflective of a mass effort to preserve the natural and ever evolving character of New York City.”
Also present at Tuesday’s rally was Glee and Shiva Baby actress Dianna Agron, who gave a speech in support of the garden. Agron is married to the artist Harold Ancart.
‘This is not the end of the fight’
For more than a decade, local activists have been fighting the city’s plans to raze the roughly one-acre sculpture garden to build Haven Green, a proposed multi-use development the city wants to build on the site.
In February, the Elizabeth Street Garden nonprofit filed a lawsuit against the city arguing the garden is a work of art that should be protected by the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), passed in 1990. VARA is an amendment to the US Copyright Act and grants artists some rights over their work, regardless of ownership, in specific circumstances. Last month, a judge denied the park’s defenders’ request for a preliminary injunction under VARA.
“While we are deeply disappointed in this decision, this is not the end of the fight,” the non-profit group said in a statement, adding that it has filed an appeal. “We remain committed to defending the Garden as a unique work of art and a vital community space, and we will continue to pursue all legal options to stop its destruction.”
But even as the group pursues the federal appeal, the non-profit says it is “preparing for the possibility that the City may close public access to Elizabeth Street Garden and install fencing”.
The garden’s history
While located on public city land, since 1991 the plot where the garden is located has been leased out—first to the late gallerist Allan Reiver, who transformed what was once an abandoned lot into an outdoor extension of his Elizabeth Street Gallery, located next-door. The garden was first opened to the public in 2005 through the gallery, and in 2013 Reiver built an entrance to the garden outside for the public to use after learning of the city’s plans to develop the site. Today, the garden welcomes more than 200,000 visitors per year, and around 400 volunteers help run daily programming on-site. Reiver died in 2021, and his son, Joseph Reiver, now leads the non-profit that manages the garden’s daily activities and continues his father’s fight to preserve its existence.
The city’s proposed development, Haven Green, would create 123 affordable residential units for seniors, plus ground-level commercial space, offices for Habitat for Humanity—a partner in the development—and a small amount of publicly accessible green space on-site. The units would be held at affordable rental rates for at least the first 60 years, an often-criticised element of the deal.
Reiver and the Elizabeth Street Garden non-profit have provided the city with a number of proposed alternative development sites, but proponents of development say it is not a matter of building alternative housing— what New York needs is additional units, full stop. The city has reached a crisis point after decades of failing to build enough affordable housing to keep pace with population and job growth.
“It’s not like we’re saying ‘Don’t build in the neighbourhood.’ We’re just saying ‘Don’t destroy a garden in order to do what you want to do,’” Reiver told The Art Newspaper last year. “It’s a false choice at the end of the day.”
