From The New York Times
April 1, 2001, Sunday
THE CITY WEEKLY DESK
NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: LOWER EAST SIDE; A Park Carved From Tenements Still Goes Begging 100 Years Later
By DENNY LEE (NYT) 463 words
The year was 1897 and the Lower East Side was bursting at the seams. Italian and Jewish immigrants were shoehorned into tenements, disease was rampant, and vagrant boys were literally playing in traffic.
So Lillian D. Wald, a social reformer, set out to clear a three-acre tract of tenements to make the country's first municipal playground. A swath of open air at East Broadway and Canal and Essex Streets, the park is named for William Henry Seward, the secretary of state under Abraham Lincoln. Seward is famed for his purchase of Alaska, once called Seward's Folly.
A century later, however, the park, home to drug dealers and rodents, had become a symbol of urban neglect. So a new breed of advocates stepped forth and helped secure $2.4 million in city financing to restore the park.
But the project has been stalled over a budget dispute.
The money was spent to restore half the park. Another $2 million is needed to complete the job. As before, the plan is to divide the cost evenly among the Parks Department, the budget of Borough President C. Virginia Fields and money provided by two Council members, Kathryn E. Freed and Margarita López. ''López is the only stumbling block,'' said the Rev. Getulio Cruz Jr., chairman of Lower Manhattan Together, a community coalition of churches.
But Ms. López, who had provided $600,000 to the project in 1998, said she then had no idea that more money would be needed. Parks officials, she said, ''never mentioned, never indicated and never suggested that this project would be in two phases.''
Ms. López added that her budget was limited, and that financing parks should be the primary responsibility of the Parks Department. ''I have other needs in my community, from the barrio houses to 35th Street, from Fifth Avenue to the East River,'' she said.
Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern said Ms. López was the only Council member with no park money in her 2000 budget. ''There are 51 Council members, and 50 found space for appropriations for parks,'' he said.
Neighbors of the park, who had hoped to celebrate the park's reopening next month, were dismayed. ''I can't believe this most historic park is lying in tatters 100 years later,'' said Lindsay Walt, who has made the park her cause. DENNY LEE
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Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
