On a sunny day beneath blue skies with shadows splashed on benches and sculptures, local residents and visitors from across New York City on Aug. 15 joined for a special garden party to celebrate the saving of the Elizabeth Street Garden.
They walked past signs saying “The garden is saved” in the nearly 20,000-square-foot space filled with trees, columns, sculptures and benches to celebrate an oasis saved from oblivion.
They also celebrated 180 affordable housing units the Mamdani Administration said is slated for 22 Suffolk Street, with hundreds more expected at 100 Gold St. and 156 Bowery St.
The Zohran Mamdani administration days ago said it would not seek to build affordable senior housing on the land, but instead build at 22 Suffolk St.
“Thank you all for celebrating with us and joining us in the space,” Joseph Reiver, the garden’s co-creator and director of Elizabeth Street Garden Inc., said “It’s been a long, long, long effort, 13 years, so many amazing people involved in it.”
Joseph Reiver and Renee GreenPhoto by Claude Solnik
The land, transferred to the Department of Parks and Recreation, Reiver said, would remain preserved as a garden in perpetuity.
“If everyone could just close their eyes and appreciate this garden that we’re in,” he said. “It represents so much for the community, but also nature, art and the spirit of New York, what we fight to preserve and celebrate about this city. Appreciate that we’re under these trees, in this oasis in the middle of the city.”
Councilmember Christopher Marte (D-Lower Manhattan), said he grew up going with his family to this garden, whose preservation he called a personal, as well as political, victory.
“Take a massive breath in and a huge sigh of relief out, because we did it,” Marte added. “We saved Elizabeth Street Garden.”
Marte called this “one of the most unique green spaces in the city in Lower Manhattan” and one of the area’s “few oases.”
“It’s all done by volunteers, community members, friends of the garden,” he said. “It really builds a sense of community.”
While The New York Times coverage cited celebrities’ and the community’s efforts, Marte called it a local community victory.
“I want to thank advocates and neighbors who have been part of this struggle for over a decade,” he said. “These are my celebrities, people from my community who give their time.”
Norman Siegel, who represented the garden for eight years in state and federal courts, said developers Pennrose Development, Habitat for Humanity and RiseBoro on Thursday at 6:50 p.m. filed a “notice of discontinuance with prejudice,” dropping their suit seeking to block park land designation.
On a sunny day beneath blue skies with shadows splashed on benches and sculptures, local residents and visitors from across New York City on Aug. 15 joined for a special garden party to celebrate the saving of the Elizabeth Street Garden.Photo by Claude Solnik
“Elizabeth Street Garden lives on,” Siegel said, adding the court on Aug. 14 dismissed the case. “It will continue to serve the people of New York City as a needed public gathering place.”
Renee Green, 94, who chairs the Elizabeth Street Garden Inc. Board and lives across the street, watched from her wheelchair.
“It was just such a long, long battle and we never got distracted from our goal, which was to have this garden remain in perpetuity and get housing not only for seniors but affordable housing for all people,” said Green. “It’s never been this beautiful. Over the years, it’s just flourished.”
Reiver led the crowd in applause for volunteers who maintain the garden, keeping the “space alive,” because “it is a living, breathing space,” and helping fight to save it.
“There are so many fights along the years that you see that are mixed, aren’t successful, that don’t make it,” Reiver said. “My mom last year said she believes in miracles. This is a miracle here.”
Reiver said “false dichotomies” such as housing or green space pit people against each other. “There is so much division in this city, this world,” he said. “There really is a pathway forward without falling into that.”
Siegel said “You can have affordable housing and open green space” which “co-exist in this case perfectly.”
He believes the city began to soften when a private Bowery Street landlord agreed to work with the city, if it saved the garden. “I thought that was one of the turning points,” he said.
“We’re talking about at least five times more, if not ten time more, affordable housing units as well as ore senior affordable housing units,” Siegel said. “Thoughtful planning produced a resolution much better from any angle.”
Marte said he looks forward to working with Mayor Mamdani “to push these developments through quickly.”
He said as many as nearly 200 affordable units are planned for 22 Suffolk; at least 128 units on Bowery site and at least 300 on Gold Street.
“That’s more affordable units than have been built in lower Manhattan in over 40 years,” Marte said “We can have hundreds, maybe thousands, of units of affordable units of housing in lower Manhattan, and preserve this garden.”
Reiver said his father Allan created the garden initially as an extension of his Elizabeth Street Gallery on a vacant lot once part of a public school.
Advocates called the garden a unique green space in Lower Manhattan.Photo by Claude Solnik
He helped his father, who leased the land in 1992, turn it into a garden lined with sculpture. His father passed away in 2021.
The lease was terminated, but eviction was dropped when then Mayor Eric Adams transferred the land to the Department of Parks and Recreation. Mayor Mamdani sought to develop housing there, before dropping plans to focus elsewhere.
“The fight drew attention to it,” said East Village resident Sekita Ekrek. “It’s one of those places you don’t’ want to tell too many people about. You don’t want it to turn into a mini Central Park.”
Jennifer Romine, who since 1997 has lived in low-income housing next to the garden, said nearby elderly residents benefit.
“We have fought tooth and nail for park space,” Romine said. “This is for the older people, a place where little old ladies in walkers come.”
She said 600 low-income residents live next door, including children “who need a place to play.
Max Rothstein, a Brooklyn resident at the garden for a friend’s birthday, sang the garden’s praises.
“It’s a special place,” Rothstein said. “The community. The greenery. There’s not a lot of greenery around here.”
Amhad Ghon, an Uptown resident, sees it as a place to rest and relax. “It’s like an oasis in the neighborhood,” he said. “It’s a small park and it’s nice sitting here.”
The space with two sculpted lions from Italy, Roman-style sphinxes, columns and a statue of Greek harvest goddess Demeter by the gates, all salvaged and reclaimed, feels like a sculpture garden.
“It’s in perpetuity. It still hasn’t really dawned on me,” Reiver said. “I’ve been in fight-or-flight for so long. I’m going to take these moments in the garden to really breathe and appreciate the trees.”