Elizabeth Street Gardens: 
A Double-Cross Revisited

By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP

The current Elizabeth Street Garden, at 199-207 Elizabeth Street, is a beautifully decorated lot privately rented from the 
city by the antique store next door, in the photo background. 
The mature trees provide a tranquil setting for public use 
during most daylight hours. Credit: Brian J. Pape, AIA.

Neighbors of the Elizabeth Street Garden (ESG), in the NOHO and Special Little Italy District (SLID), continue to express their concern that years of promises and years of being ignored have brought about this fiasco of controversy.
The ESG site was part of the Public School Society’s PS-5 built in 1822, then donated to the city in 1853 for educational use, including a playground that is where ESG is now located, according to the deed restrictions.
The city demolished the school in 1971, and the double-cross began. In 1981, the city sold the southern part of the school site for 151 units Section 8 affordable housing at 21 Spring St., reserving the northern part (the ESG site) “exclusively for recreational use.” Instead of abiding by the deed restrictions, or even abiding by their obligation to neighbors to keep the lot as recreation space, the city left the site to deteriorate, trying to pass off the use of the site to the 21 Spring St. tenants, who could ill afford it.
Into this morass stepped a neighborhood business, Elizabeth Street Gallery, a store selling antiques and architectural decorations (some large sculptures too), who rented the weedy, fenced lot from the city, with a promise to clean up the garbage, and so much more. Since 2013, the lot has been opened to neighbors, similar to many other downtown open garden plots. To the seniors living at 21 Spring St., and all the other neighbors, the Garden is a Godsend, as they have repeatedly testified at hearings.
Yet in 2012, the Councilperson for a different district, the Essex Crossing Redevelopment area, made a secret, backroom deal ear-marking the ESG site for affordable housing. The CB2 and neighbors were not informed about this dirty deed until a year after it was don
Once this double-cross was discovered, a concerted effort was made to return it to “exclusively for recreational use.” To focus on the current status of this beautifully decorated lot rented from the city and managed by the ESG Inc., a non-profit group that offers free year-round public programs, really misses the point.
The Community Board has for years studied the various issues, reported their findings at their open meetings, and strongly advocated for much-needed park space, as well as more consideration of better sites for affordable housing blocks, close to community and recreational centers and public libraries and parks, but it seems to go unheeded.
Friends of ESG want the park-like atmosphere preserved as a public neighborhood park forever, as once promised by the city, and in recognition of the Historic District’s goal of retaining neighborhood character within the NOHO and Special Little Italy District (SLID) on the National Register of Historic Places.
This impasse seems to beg the question: Can we get both affordable housing and more park space, rather than either-or? The city needs both to survive.

Brian J. Pape is a citizen architect in private practice, serving on the Manhattan District 2 Community Board Executive Committee, the Landmarks Committee, the State Liquor Authority Committee, and Street Activities & Resiliency Committee, (speaking personally, and not in an official capacity). He is co-chair of the American Institute of Architects NY Design for Aging Committee, and Historic Buildings, Housing, and PassiveHaus Committee member. He is a LEED-AP “Green” certified architect, a journalist specializing in architecture and urban subjects. He is appointed to the Waterfront Code Committee (2023), the Use & Accessibility sub-Committee, part of NYC Building Codes.