A Pocket Park for 14th Street
By Brian J Pape, AIA, LEED-AP
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints plans a new park with a concrete paved basketball court here at 143 West 14th Street. The Os Gemeos murals will stay. A winter 2025 completion date is scheduled. Credit: Brian J. Pape, AIA.
It would not be unusual to expect an empty mid-block lot on a busy commercial street to sprout a new building. But we are surprised to see that the owners of one empty lot on 14th Street, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, will build a park there. The construction poster states a winter 2025 completion date, although no work has started on the weed-choked area as of late September.
The lot is addressed as 143 West 14th Street, in between the Modern Bread and Bagel Shop and Chama Mama Restaurant between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. It is part of property attached to 144 West 15th Street, a circa 1920 five-story building used by the church as a chapel and administrative offices. This project was first filed in 2020 as part of a six-story vertical expansion of the Street Building, or an 11-story mixed-use new construction, without specific details. It has not commenced. City Creek Reserve, the real estate arm of the Latter-day Saints, was listed as the developer in those plans as well as on the fence poster.
There is a concrete paved basketball court on the lot that will stay, and the poster shows a plan of the new park, adding a paved path down the middle, flanked by planting beds and planters on both sides, sloping from the gated entry on 14th Street down to the basketball court. Since this seems to be a private development, there is no indication whether the public will have access to the area.
The outstanding feature of this empty lot for the past several years has been two very colorful murals. They are titled Rock On to the Break of Dawn. Mural 1 is on the wall of 145 West 14th Street and Mural 2 is on the wall of 139 West 14th Street.
These works were created in 2017 as an homage to New York City’s breakdancing battles of the 1980s by artist Os Gemeos. Thanks to the reporting of Michael Young and Matt Pruznick on September 9, 2025 in the blogsite YIMBY New York, we learn that the murals depict characters such as the late Frosty Freeze and Kuriaki of the Rock Steady Crew, with a denim jacket feature by Todd James, aka REAS, and a photograph of graffiti artist Dondi White by Martha Cooper displayed on a shirt. Numerous humongous boomboxes of the era are front and center too. They will stay.
The previous permit filing specified community space, which may refer to this 62’ x 106.5’ lot for the new park, as posted on the site’s construction fence. Credit: City Creek Reserve.
