Last week, the 9/11-memorial "Tiles for America" was removed from the chain-link fence at the corner of Greenwich Avenue and 7th Avenue.
Volunteers carefully clipped the tiles' wires and placed them into boxes. The tiles came down because the MTA is ready to build their controversial ventilation plant at Mulray Square (the non-Edward Hopper corner that still has an interesting history).
The Tiles for America Preservation Project has a website and a petition you can sign to ensure that the tiles don't end up sitting in a basement in Albany. The organization has a plan to move them nearby, on display, so they stay in the Village, but they need help with donations.
Find out more from this video:
8 comments:
Damn. Goodbye St. Vincent's, and now this.
The tiles are being removed, stored, catalouged, cleaned and will be reinstalled in permanent display cases back at the site after the vent plant is built. Dont get hysterical over nothing. They are not being packed away to be forgotten.
The tiles are being removed for their safe keeping. They will be cataloged, cleaned, documented and returned to the site in new display cases after the ventilation plant is built. Dont get hysterical over nothing. The MTA is doing a fine job at protecting and restoring these tiles to the community after the construction work ends.
Have you considered the possibility that the current structure on the site, which was converted to an Esso station during the war, was originally the diner depicted by Hopper?
I'll always miss St. Vincent's. When I found out it was closing, I got sick just to see the inside of it one last time.
There was a gas station *and* a White Tower on the site, but both built post-Hopper: www.gvshp.org/_gvshp/preservation/mulry/doc/hopper-site-doc.pdf (PDF, very much worth reading if you haven't seen).
Before then, as noted, Seventh Avenue stopped at 11th/Greenwich before it was cut through -- the two or three small former gas stations built along the 7th Avenue blocks between there and Houston, now converted into little houses etc. (mostly hidden, now, behind walls, but at least one was still semi-functioning in the late 70s) were all built at the same time. There's a picture of the site pre-1919 and in 1975-76 in "New York Then And Now," the wonderful old Dover book (which could stand a new edition...)
As for the likely but still supposed replacement, remember that they dismantled and planned to reconstruct a razed Bogardus building that stood originally on Washington Street in the old market district until the cast iron facade was stolen in its entirety from the warehouse in which the Landmarks Preservation Commission stored it, in the 1970s. And don't get me started on all the architectural elements preserved, and then essentially trashed, by the Brooklyn Museum.
So until the tiles are actually catalogued, cleaned,documented and returned to the site in new display cases, I'm counting no chickens, personally.
the whole Hopper story: http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2010/06/finding-nighthawks-part-3.html
that the tiles don't end up sitting in a basement in Albany. The organization has a plan to move them nearby, on display, so they stay in the Village, travertine pavers
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