The Harlem Neighborhood Block Association

Neighbors united to improve the quality of life in Harlem

Tag: Wards Island

Good News For Marcus Garvey Park

Posted on by Harlem Shill

Some great CONFIRMED news coming up for all of us at Marcus Garvey Park & there is more good stuff brewing.

FUNDING FOR INFRASTRUCTURE

1.  $12 million designated by Mayor Adams for stone repair and rat abatement / awaiting information on timeline as this was recently announced.

2.  $1.7 million allocated by City Council Member Kristin Richardson Jordan for “Green 2 Greener Initiative”/ sustainable energy solutions (we are working with her office & capital & planning offices at Parks now to finalize this plan)

3. $1.6 million committed by State Sen. Cordell Cleare for NW small playground  / awaiting information on timeline as state funding moves more slowly than city funding

4. State of Good Repair Grant for repaving of the entire NW and SW sections of the park which will add new curbing, paver stones and (5) ADA entrances and fix the drainage issues inside the 123rd & MMPW entrance where the “lake” forms (expected to begin in early November 2023)

NEW HARLEM HORT HQ 

— $50,000+ pledged by New York Junior League to finish needed work and open this to the public in June 2023

You may have noticed (2) greenhouses set up at the east end of the pool. Mike, Erick & I have been building out our plan to create a horticultural headquarters (HQ) that will do the following:

1. enable us to cultivate our own plants for Marcus Garvey & for the other (3) historic Harlem parks

2. enable us to offer free public horticulture programming (workshops, demonstrations, author talks, arts horticulture events, etc) by our Parks horticulture experts and with interested partners including GreenThumb, Partnerships for Parks, Harlem Grown, City Gardens Club, Horticultural Society & others

3. offer a meetup spot for the uptown gardening/hort community such as GreenThumb gardeners who have never had a central meet up site

4. create a hort volunteering meet up place where schedules can be posted, signup and pickup of tools, gloves, etc, can happen

5. offer a beautiful positive space for the community that can be used for events, meditation, etc.

$1.3 MILLION GRANT FROM MELLON FOUNDATION TO HARLEM GROWN 

Harlem Grown submitted a grant to Mellon Foundation to provide support to Marcus Garvey as a cultural heritage site. This grant will provide the following:

1. support / fund new & existing community programming

2. support more public art in the park

3. support the mobile Harlem Grown teaching food kitchen in the park

4. support community engagement for the park

NEW COMMUNITY ROOM BY BALLFIELD TO BE AVAILABLE TO COMMUNITY PARTNERS / HARLEM LITTLE LEAGUE

The new comfort station between the ballfield and amphitheater has a community room inside of it that I can begin scheduling now for use by community partners such as Marcus Garvey Park Alliance, MMPCIA, Harlem Little League and others. Please contact me if your group wants to schedule time in the room for a meeting, community engagement forum, a membership recruitment event, etc. We are very excited to officially open this room with our great park partner — Harlem Little League in April as they kick off another season !

NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES

State NY Parks office has taken the lead working with me and our 2 parks groups to submit nomination paperwork for Marcus Garvey Park to be named to the National Register of Historic Places. We have moved forward to the next nomination round. If selected, this would provide more opportunities for needed funding such as for the acropolis.

ON POINT PARTNERSHIP REDUCES NEEDLES & MORE IN THE PARK

Our partnership with On Point, a drug treatment center on E. 126th, has helped us reduce the following:

1. # of needles in the park

2. the # of drug-addicted people choosing the park to inject/use

3. the # of people our PEP unit (Parks Enforcement Patrol) saves the lives of via NARCAN, which enables PEP to focus on its primary job of public safety

HARLEM EAT UP COMING TO THE PARK IN SEPTEMBER / OTHER KEY PROGRAMMING

I have been working with Harlem Eat Up to move their great food event from Morningside Park to Marcus Garvey Park, which is confirmed. Red Rooster’s own local & global celebrity Marcus Samuelsson created this local focus on great Harlem restaurants. The official event will take place September 9-10. We are finalizing logisitics and working with our Parks special events team. I will keep you informed on this great news.

Other key programming of our April – November schedule includes events being planned / confirmed per below:

MARCH – Bethel Gospel Social Justice & Community Volunteer Event

APRIL – Earth Day Community Volunteer Event

MAY – Mother’s Day Gardening Day

JUNE – Harlem HQ Opening Weekend  and later in the month the 3rd Annual Juneteenth Festival

JULY – Classical Theatre of Harlem with annual free Shakespeare in the park & Jazzmobile Fridays

AUGUST – Jazzmobile Fridays continue & Charlie Parker Jazz Festival

SEPTEMBER – 3rd Annual Opening Night of MET Opera

OCTOBER – 2nd Annual Halloween Fright Night

TRAIL BOARDS FOR THE PARK

I have submitted for budgeting approval for (2-3) trail boards — bulletin boards – to be installed in the park to share news from Parks / city agencies and our (2) park groups, Marcus Garvey Park Alliance & MMPCIA with the public. 

VOLUNTEERS

Please consider volunteering for the park as we always need interested people from the park community, partner park groups, schools, churches, etc, to help our small staff with the following:

– trash cleanup

– gardening volunteering (weeding, raking, planting, etc)

– painting (benches, fences, etc)

– programming in the park

– weekly walks of the park

– marketing of events & information in the park

+ more.

Thank you and please let me know if you have any questions and if you want to schedule the community room, volunteer, etc & feel free to share!

Cheers

Jana La Sorte

Administrator of Historic Harlem Parks

W 212.830.7896

E [email protected]

Shelter on Wards Island Closes

Gothamist and WNYC are reporting on the quiet closing of a disfunctional, dangerous, and troubled shelter on Wards Island.

The shelter which took up a few floors of the NYS psychiatric center (pictured above) was part of former Governor Cuomo’s family legacy – with his sister taking the helm most recently.

https://gothamist.com/news/troubled-wards-island-homeless-shelter-tied-to-ex-gov-cuomos-sister-quietly-closes?s=01

Tweet Regarding The 25th Precinct Community Council Meeting Gets Thousands of Views

Poop and Harlem’s Hidden COVID Numbers

Posted on by Harlem Shill

In September 2020, New York began to sample and test wastewater at New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) wastewater plants for COVID-19.

If you recall an earlier post on wastewater and New York – https://hnba.nyc/where-does-my-sewage-go/ – you may remember that virtually all of Harlem’s wastewater (basically anything that goes down your drain or toilet) ends up at Wards’ Island’s DEP complex. New York Open Data has made the wastewater sampling data available, so I decided to plot COVID-19 as detected in our (Harlem’s) poop.

September 2020 December 2020 December 2021 April 2022

As you likely know, wastewater sampling can only give a community average of sorts, but what it does (that swab sampling of individual New Yorkers can’t do) is integrates information on the people who never or rarely test.

The chart above is amazing and terrifying at the same time. The left-hand side is September 2020, and the right hand side is April 2022.

That crazy spike is from 12/27/2021 – after Thanksgiving 2021, around Christmas – when Omicron converged in the US. Holiday travel, family gatherings, shopping, and the shift to socializing indoors, all combined with a more contagious COVID variant.

Juneteenth Celebration on East 111st Street

(between Lex/3rd)

Wards Island Sewage Treatment Site

Posted on by Harlem Shill

Completed in 1937, the Wards Island Sewage Treatment plant was the first to use the activated sludge process to treat sewage by removing solid matter, known as sludge, to leave behind clean water that could be released back into the environment. Prior to this only a fraction of the city’s sewage received treatment. Instead, most spilled from sewers directly into surrounding waterways where it strangled marine life and polluted city beaches. The project was realized with more than $11 million in grant monies from the Works Progress Administration. By 1939, both the Bowery Bay and Tallman Island sewage treatment plants were also in operation with more being planned. Today 14 Wastewater Resource Recovery Facilities treat over 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater every single day and New York City’s waterways are cleaner than ever.

Below is a photo of the sewage treatment plant in 1950.

The area to the north, where the FDNY training facility now exists, was a marshy peninsula, sticking out towards the Bronx.

Here is an image of this plant being build during the New Deal 1930s:

And the completed Administration building:

New Uptown Gallery and Exhibition

Be sure to check-out the AHL Foundation’s new gallery in Harlem (on FDB at 139). Their inaugural exhibition features Buhm Hong, Gyun Hur, Devin Osorio and Dianne Smith and is well worth visiting.

The exquisite drawings and digital art by Buhm Hong is mesmerizing and somehow both calming and disquieting at the same time.

https://www.ahlfoundation.org/ahl-foundation-announces-opening-of-new-gallery-in-west-harlem-in-april-2022-inaugural-exhibition-featuring-buhm-hong-gyun-hur-devin-osorio-and-dianne-smith/

New York, NY – AHL Foundation is proud to announce the opening of its first gallery in West Harlem in April 2022. The wheelchair-accessible gallery is located on the ground floor 2605 Frederick Douglass Blvd, New York, NY with a basement space for additional programming. The new space houses the Archive of Korean Artists in America (AKAA) and an educational space for the community.

Following AHL Foundation’s move to Harlem after its 19 year history, it is fitting that this inaugural exhibition in the new space uptown responds to its new neighborhood. Guest curated by Amy Kahng, the inaugural exhibition, Space Uptown opens to the public on April 30, 3-6pm and is on view until May 21, 2022.

An exhibition about locality and neighborhood history, the exhibition features artistic practices that reflect the local neighborhood. Participating artists Buhm Hong, Gyun Hur, Devin Osorio, and Dianne Smith, three of whom live and work in upper Manhattan, consider the communities, histories, memories, and environments that make up Harlem and Upper Manhattan more broadly.

Dianne Smith’s dynamic video work, The House of Lois K. Alexander-Lane, celebrates Harlem’s Black cultural history by weaving together footage from Smith’s participation as a young model in the 1985-1989 iterations of Harlem Fashion Week. Buhm Hong’s intricate and labyrinthine architectural designs, rendered both digitally and on paper, draw on various architectural references from his personal biography including his current homebase in Harlem. Devin Osorio’s fantastical paintings and sculptural works document his neighborhood of Washington Heights, highlighting the quotidian experiences of community, work, commuting, and familial connections. The twelve teardrop vessels filled with Hudson and Harlem River water by Gyun Hur reflect on loss, commemoration, and memory, particularly for the victims of the 2021 Atlanta Spa shooting. Installed here in Harlem, Hur’s work takes on new resonances within the current and historical movements for racial justice that have taken place in this neighborhood.

Randalls Island

Posted on by Harlem Shill

At the base of the Triborough bridge (where the pedestrian walkway starts in Astoria) there is a wonderful, vintage and cast metal map of Randalls Island:

Note the red button on the right-hand side that indicates where you are.

Note how Wards Island was not ‘open’ to the public (greyed out) and had a dock on the east river. There is also a more significant water/marsh/wetland separating the two islands at the time – although admittedly they were physically joined by infill.

The presence of the Wards Island Bridge (at 103rd Street) on this map indicates it dates from after May 18, 1951: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wards_Island_Bridge

The baseball fields (one of which seems to have bleachers) are indicated as 1/4 circle indents.

Downing Stadium – now Icahn – had a more Greco-Roman, half oval set of stands at the time.

Today, the printed map – enamel on fiberglass – looks much different:

With public space on Wards Island, welcoming the public.

Seen on FDB

Got the Itch?

Posted on by Harlem Shill

Got the itch to do some spring cleaning? Then meet up with Uptown Grand Central this weekend to spring clean on a massive scale.

This Saturday, April 10, marks the kick-off of Uptown’s spring cleaning season, with the first of our warm-weather community clean-ups along the East 125th Street corridor. We’re glad to be doing it in partnership with the Sanitation Foundation (who, yes! know a thing or two about trash)!

It’s also the NYPD’s Graffiti Clean-Up Day (so we’ll be brushing up some artwork as well) and the beautification day for Art In the Park (in case you have a green thumb).

We’ll meet up at noon in the Uptown community space under the tracks at 125th Street & Park Avenue. Gloves, brooms and other supplies will be provided, so sign up here to help us get a headcount! Social distancing will be enforced. And most likely there’ll be snacks.

Where Does My Sewage Go?

Quick. Do you know where your sinks, bathtubs, showers, and toilets eventually empty? For most of us in Harlem, our sewage waste goes to Wards Island to the sewage treatment plant that was built in the 1940’s in the shadow of the Hellgate Bridge.

A 2013 plan to upgrade the facility is ongoing, but since the Public Works Administration built the Wards Island plant, your sewage flows (in a pipe) under the East River to Wards Island where in 8 hours, the solids are removed, the liquid cleaned, and the resulting clean water is put into the East River.

In the map above, any drain or toilet in the purple area, eventually gets to Wards Island.

Please note that you should never believe that anything labeled ‘flushable’ is indeed flushable. Do not put it in the toilet. Place it in a garbage can and take it out with the solid waste.

COVID-19 Positivity and Vaccination Rates for Harlem

From Patch.com:

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/1ZvOB/2/

Hover over a Zip Code or click on a line to focus on that particular data.

Nick Garber from Patch.com has information on our community and the vaccine:

Latest Harlem vaccine data

  • 10026 – Central Harlem (South): 34 percent received one dose, 20 percent fully vaccinated
  • 10027 – Central Harlem (South)/Morningside Heights/West Harlem: 33 percent received one dose, 19 percent fully vaccinated
  • 10029 – East Harlem: 36 percent received one dose, 22 percent fully vaccinated
  • 10030 – Central Harlem (North): 28 percent received one dose, 16 percent fully vaccinated
  • 10031 – Hamilton Heights/West Harlem: 34 percent received one dose, 21 percent fully vaccinated
  • 10035 – East Harlem: 39 percent received one dose, 23 percent fully vaccinated
  • 10037 – Central Harlem (North)/East Harlem: 32 percent received one dose, 20 percent fully vaccinated
  • 10039 – Central Harlem (North)/Washington Heights (South): 27 percent received one dose, 16 percent fully vaccinated

Before Wards Island

Posted on by Harlem Shill

Before Wards Island and the infamous M35 bus, Camp LaGuardia, north of the city near Chester, NY, was New York City’s homeless facility.

Camp LaGuardia begin in 1918 as a prison for women, but in 1934 it became a work camp for homeless men. Men at the camp were trained under a scheme of “rehabilitative work” and it was hoped that they would find employment at the many nearby resorts in the Catskills.

By the 1990s, Camp LaGuardia’s homeless population had grown to consist more of young, drug addicted and/or mentally ill males who were allowed the leeway to leave the grounds. The residents of Chester were on edge after incidents of lewdness and public urination. As part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s five-year plan to reduce homelessness in New York City and allocation of Camp LaGuardia’s $19 million budget on more long-term solutions such as subsidized housing, city officials announced the closing of the camp in November 2006.

New York City sold the Camp LaGuardia to Orange County in 2007 for $8.5 million.

Lead with Brown Bike Girl

Everyone is invited to attend another round of group ride leader training with The Brown Bike Girl! 

The purpose of this training is to build local cycling leadership and provide safe, local opportunities to ride outside. Participants will receive free training and promotional items, and are expected to lead at least 1 group bike ride in East Harlem in 2021. Details about this year’s training cycle are included below. Please let us know if you have any questions, and share this opportunity with your communities!

Application: http://bit.ly/leadrides 

  • Applications close March 26th
  • Interested participants must apply through the link provided
  • Applicants will be notified by March 31st if they have been accepted. Preference will be given to Harlem and East Harlem residents.

Training Schedule

Applicants must be available and willing to attend all sessions to participate in this year’s training