From The Villager
Can public art and a park coexist on Broome St.?
By: Lincoln Anderson
June 06, 2001
Lawrence White shows where he scratched Bob Dylan’s name into wet cement at park triangle under construction at Broome and Watt Sts. in Soho.As a light mist of rain fell two Friday evenings ago, Lawrence White peeled back the plastic tarps to show where he etched the names on the top of the still-wet, low, cement walls: Edgar Allan Poe, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Sinatra, Allen Ginsberg, Robert De Niro Jr. and Robert De Niro Sr. - "a great artist in his own right, a painter," White noted - Lou Reed, Debbie Harry.... The names ran on around the top of the walls, Michael Basquiat, Marlon Brando, Robert Frank, Georgia O'Keefe....
White, a dance photographer who lives nearby, scratched the names to make a point: that art is what Soho is all about - or at least was about once.
The small, smog-choked, traffic triangle at the intersection of Broome and Watts Sts., near the Holland Tunnel entrance, for years was home to a collection of metal sculptures by local artist and Broome St. Bar fixture Bobby Bolles. Some liked the sculptures, others called them an unsightly trash magnet. At any rate, the Parks Department recently removed the sculptures to make way for a new landscaped park with three-foot-high fences. Feeling something of theirs was wrongly taken, White and fellow Soho artists and elected officials say the sculptures, stored on Randalls Island, should be incorporated into any new park created there.
Walking his Lab/Husky mix - named Art, naturally - White said critics who complained the sculptures trapped garbage should have helped clean up the area rather than condemn the art.
He was joined by George Bliss, a designer who teaches at Parsons, and lives and runs a bicycle pedicab garage right off of the triangle, who has his own plan to put a pedicab garage and solar-powered electric-car refueling station on the triangle.
"There are no other places this strategic," Bliss said: Motorists inching towards the tunnel and watching electric vehicles being repowered and pedicabs would, Bliss is sure, realize they should abandon their polluting cars for cleaner transportation.
Councilmember Kathryn Freed happened by and stopped to discuss the situation. She supports bringing back all of Bolles' sculptures and said that under the Federal Arts Protection Act as well as Soho's historic district zoning it was probably illegal to remove them. She also said that the sculptures might predate the city's Art Commission, which approves public-art installations.
"They've been pushing this through without consulting the community," Freed said, while balancing in her black trenchcoat with her briefcase on one of the new, low concrete walls. "I think the sculpture is grandfathered. They've got to bring it back.
"Why does this have to be Middle America?" Freed said of the planned park. "I'm surprised there aren't picket fences here....
Freed noted she recently put a resolution before the City Council to rename the spot Bobby Bolles Triangle. She also said if all the sculptures aren't put back she'd be a plaintiff in a lawsuit to force the city to do so.
"I was almost an artist, sort of," she noted, recalling her earlier efforts at the pottery wheel.
White says there are reports that a commercial condominium owned by "a rich guy" just north of the triangle with windows looking out over the triangle paid for the design and construction of the planned park.
White also thinks in addition to Bolles' artwork the triangle could have rotating sculpture exhibits, and should have "indigenous trees." He fondly recalled early mornings sitting among the triangle's art with Art at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. There was an aspen that broke through the asphalt and grew up through an opening in one of Bolles' sculptures, and flourished, "when trees on Route 9A were dying," White recalled.
But while the pioneering artists still live there, Soho has long since changed. A Tommy Hilfiger store is opening up down the block. And another former public art sculpture garden is now a private basketball court fenced in behind high walls for the tenants of the commercial condo that White and others suspect of funding the park.
"If there weren't artists here who sell art on the street, there wouldn't be any arts in Soho," White said. "[Parks] sees this as a triangle on a piece of paper. We see it as our history."
"This is the last stand," said Bliss. "They're really about to erase any evidence of public art in Soho."
Tony Dapolito, longtime chairperson of Community Board 2's parks committee, said of Bolles' sculpture, "the problem is when you put it there and it gets old and dirty it does look like junk." And he said Bliss had presented his pedicab-garage plan at Board 2 but failed to get state funding.
"He never got the money. How do we clean [the triangle] up?" Dapolito asked. "It might be 10 years till they get the money for that bicycle thing."
Meanwhile, Dapolito said Board 2 has always supported retaining the sculptures in some form.
"We suggested they come back," he said. "But we didn't really say all of them. They want them all back now. Every resolution that we passed, we said we want them all back, or some of them, or whatever. There's a couple of [people] made a big stink about [how] they want all the sculptures back."
The C.B. 2 parks committee's May resolution notes for "many years" the community has tried to renovate the triangle and there have been "many failures" until the recent Greenstreets joint project by the Parks and Transportation Departments. The resolution notes the board approves the plan's "general outline," but "objects to the removal of art from this location despite several prior resolutions to the contrary." The resolution concludes that "without causing substantial delay to this project and without reducing the number of [new] trees and without requiring removal of work already completed, C.B. 2 urges the Department of Parks to meet with community residents and create an open park plan with ample space for temporary sculpture exhibitions including permanent return of sculptures by Bob Bolles located here for many years."
Since that Friday two weeks ago no one from Parks has returned to complete the job at the triangle. White had a meeting set up with Adrian Benepe, Manhattan borough Parks commissioner, last Friday, but found it not on the calendar when he showed up with his slide projector to show the triangle's history.
On May 28, a rally to save the sculptures drew 40 people. There was music, dancing and mural making and representatives for Councilmember Freed and Alan Gerson - a candidate to fill Freed's seat. White said their representatives said Freed and Gerson would both take legal action to restore the sculptures.
Benepe said people will like the project when it's done and said that Bolles' art was rundown and not protected under law. He said a group of local people had been pushing for the project for years, but didn't name any of them, and that the process has been open. Benepe said when done the park will contain 10 small, ornamental, flowering cherry trees, 11 zelkova shade trees, 60 dogwood shrubs, Betty Prior roses and other foliage, with six benches arranged around a central decorative, floral planting area and tiled plaza. (He noted aspens, which White prefers, and other poplars don't live long.)
"It's quite beautiful," Benepe said. "The landscape architect who designed it, Gail Wittwer, designed the new Irish Hunger Memorial in Battery Park City. It'll be fragrant. Really, we'll take a place that was dead and decrepit and people will be able to use it." He said the funds for the project are mainly city capital dollars.
As for the sculptures, he said, "they were placed there on an ad-hoc basis with no official permission from the city. Essentially, they were abandoned property. We're happy to bring back a few of the better ones. They were dangerous, dilapidated, rusting, falling-apart litter magnets. The last time I visited them there was a homeless guy sleeping in the middle of them." Benepe said anyone who wants ownership or to reclaim the sculptures is welcome to contact the Parks Department.
Benepe also noted that despite Freed's assertions, the Art Commission was established in 1898 "to prevent inappropriate artworks from being installed around the city. Kathryn Freed is a very good Councilmember - but she's misinformed on this issue," he said.
"In a neighborhood that's as poorly served as this one, in terms of open space, we should do everything we can do to bring in plants and flowers and oxygen-providing trees," Benepe added. "You'll be surprised how nice a green space can be - even with traffic whizzing by." He said the project should finish some time this summer.
©The Villager 2003
