Letters to the Editor
Elizabeth Street Garden
Dear Brian J Pape,
I have enjoyed and learned from your essays in the Village View for years. In the September 2024 issue you talked about the Elisabeth St. Garden (officially deeded ‘recreational space’) and the proposed destruction of it. My first thought was a free association — the destruction of giant religious effigies on a cliffside in the Near East. Boom boom boom — gone forever and civilization’s loss. Ordinary structures can go up and down without a problem to our humanity but not places with meaning created by sweat and heart as the Garden was and still is.
I think of Robert Moses’ plan to cut a super highway down 5th Ave through the heart of the Village to smooth out traffic, which would have destroyed Greenwich Village as we know it. Witness the destruction and loss caused by his smashing of a Bronx expressway through rich and vital ethnic neighborhoods.
So I am grateful to you for reporting on this impasse. The Elizabeth St Garden has a soul and is one of the many jewels that make New York the unique and wonderful city we love and the whole world wants to be part of. The amount of housing gained by destroying this tiny treasure is CRUMBS to the city’s need.
So lets save it and be grateful for its existence. It reminds me of another garden in my past — St. John’s Church, whose pastor used to vacation in Europe and bring back statuary which he scattered amongst the ivy of what was for a while a community-enjoyed garden.
On another note I am so glad the Village View continues. We have so many Village periodicals sprouting up currently, whose real source seems to be elsewhere and whose writers can’t be reached.
—Penny Jones, Westbeth (another treasure)
Open Letter and Challenge
Brian Pape doesn’t know what a crime is, or who is guilty of it (Village View, December 2024 “What is a crime?”) but he didn’t hesitate in using that word to imply that altering an unofficial community garden like the Elizabeth Street Garden (ESG) should be considered a crime. (Village View, Sept 2024, “Is It a Crime to Destroy Recreation Space”). Let me clarify this. If people who want to alter the ESG for housing might be, metaphorically, committing a crime in his opinion, than those who want to preserve it at the expense of needed housing are also, metaphorically, committing a crime. People are more important than plants. ESG NIMBY opponents didn’t cause homelessness, but their opposition to new housing is helping to perpetuate it.
As for the rhetoric he uses, altering a garden is not “destroying” it, and 120 apartments are not a “few” for those people who will be living there, and a garden is not an “established necessity” if there are 400,000 square feet of open space within walking distance. And permanent housing is needed, not just “more shelters” or new SRO lodgings which have been discussed for years but are still just a proposal.
Here is my challenge. If the Haven Green Housing ever gets built on Elizabeth Street it will have about 16,000 square feet of rooftop space. To an experienced architect like Mr. Pape, this can be a blank canvas on which to build a rooftop patio, or green roof, or solar roof, or whatever. Please do it. Show us what can be done. It’s not impossible. We can have both open space, even if some of it is on a rooftop, and housing on this site. If the inner architect is still alive in Mr. Pape let it be creative and not just reporting on what other people are doing.
For years, in both Westview News and Village View, Mr. Pape has written articles about the history of New York and the changes that have occurred. He has written analysis of new projects going up that is more detailed and sophisticated than anything you see in the New York Times. I have enjoyed these articles immensely. They show that change is often an improvement. That’s why it is so disappointing to me to see that at the ESG he, and many others, believe change is somehow catastrophic. Design a rooftop for Haven Green already.
—Alec Pruchnicki
History of Street Names
I write to add a further complexity to the complicated history of street names recited in Brian Pape’s article West Fourth and Charles Street in the December issue. From the development of the brownstones on the north side of Charles Street In the mid 1860’s until 1936, the north side of Charles Street between West Fourth and Bleecker was named Van Nest Place, in honor of Abraham Van Nest, the last owner of the Peter Warren mansion which had occupied the block. The change to both sides of the street having the name Charles Street was made at the request of residents by reason of confusion with Van Nest Avenue in the Bronx. A shadow of this history remains in that the odd numbers added to the north side in 1936 do not synch with the even numbers on the south side, to the continuing confusion of Uber drivers, delivery people, and the like.
—George A. Davidson
