East-Side Part 2

 This week on our explorations through New York, we re-visited the East Side of Manhattan. We began our travels taking the subway into Times Square then the Shuttle into Grand Central Station. Next we rode the subway uptown until we hit 103^rd street in East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem. Walking through the streets of East Harlem was much different from Harlem which we visited last week. The area, though still seemed lower middle class economically, the sense of culture and community was much more apparent than in Harlem.

Our first stop in Spanish Harlem was to the El Museo Del Barrio, which translates to the museum of the neighborhood. This museum was started by many groups of people such as teachers, activists in the community and artists from Spanish decent. The museum was started in 1969 and opened in a public school classroom. The artwork comes from Columbian, Caribbean, Latin American backgrounds and the artwork and history was displayed in numerous different places before it had a secure home in the old Heckscher Foundation for Children building. The museum now has a permanent collection, as well as collections that change regularly with new, less well-known artists displaying their work. The museum del barrio is also very involved with the schools in the area, have many outreach programs and festivals, most of which are free of charge. The museum is really working to help increase the education of the arts, and will help children in schools however they can (BG, 376-377).

A tour guide from del barrio was able to walk us around the streets of Spanish Harlem, to show us how art is seen all throughout the area. First we stopped to see a huge mural that was painted over 25 years ago to represent the people of East Harlem in their everyday lives entitled “The Spirit of East Harlem”. This mural showed men playing dominos on the street, people in the community hanging out talking, children, elders, singers, and anything else that was important culturally to the area. Recently this mural was restored by a man called Manny Vega Jr. due to reckless graffiti that was done over the painting. This mural is extremely important to the town, so it was important to have someone talented enough to restore this painting and give it the respect it deserves.

 Another area we saw on the tour of Spanish Harlem was an area that couldn’t be ruined with graffiti…because it is graffiti. This graffiti hall of fame, though is commissioned to be there, and for very good reason. These graffiti works of art are amazing to see. After seeing 5 Pointz in Queens we were exposed to the extreme talent that graffiti artists can have, but these walls in East Harlem were different in that they surrounded a school! Now graffiti isn’t always accepted in communities, and even though it can be amazing works of art, these spray paintings are facing children every day while they play outside during recess at school. I found the choice of placement for the graffiti hall of fame to be odd, but loved the work that was shown. The hall of fame was started by Ray Rodriguez in 1980 and is located at the Jackie Robinson Educational Complex.

Later we went to the Museum of the City of New York which is right next to Del Barrio. This museum didn’t have much to look at, and I did find the flow of art very cohesive. The rooms that I enjoyed looking through were almost completely devoted to the Twin Towers. They had photography taken of the buildings anywhere from when they were being built in the 1970’s, to the smoke seen from the towers during 9/11, to the new tower being built now. The video of the history of New York called Timescapes was my favorite part of the museum. The information was presented in a very interesting way, showing the timeline of events, explaining how and why things happened as they did and why things are how they are today. I think people take for granted what this miraculous city is, and forget that at one time this was all grasslands, and people had to come here and decide to build. These changes didn’t happen overnight and there were many different influential people with ideas on how to improve this city to make it one of the most important cities in the world (BG, 376).

For the rest of our explorations for the day, we went through the majestic Central Park. We entered at 103^rd and 5^th, and our destination was strawberry fields at 72^nd. In 1844 there was a lot of talk about reserving a piece of land in the quickly populating Manhattan for a public park. In 1856 this land was purchased for 5 million dollars. Now that they had the land, what were they going to do with it? A competition was started to have many different designers to add in their input of what they thought would be the best layout for this new park. In 1858 Olmsted and Vaux’s design was choose named the Greensward Plan. This plan allowed for the park to keep most of its natural charm, by only augmenting what was already there for them. This park was created for everyone in the areas use, whether they were poor, rich, or anyone in between. The 20 year endeavor allowed for jobs in constructing, not only in planting the hundreds of trees, flowers, and shrubs, but for the additions of a pool, zoo, transverse streets, and even an aqueduct system to supply water to the island (this aqueduct eventually closed and the people of Manhattan now receive their water supply from upstate). Many people wanted to push for additions of other things such as horse race tracts, plane fields, and even an underground garage(which I personally think would have been a great idea since Robert Moses decided to bombard Manhattan with so many new roads and highways, and since parking is always a problem in the city), but never the less all of these ideas and then some were turned down, trying to keep the park traditional to what it was originally made for…a break from the non-stop of everyday (BG, 280-281).

After walking back and forth, winding and weaving through different paths in the park, we finally reached our destination of Strawberry Fields. I’ve always heard about Strawberry Fields from my parents who were true Beatles fans (even their wedding song is Here, There, and Everywhere).  Growing up I assumed first that there were actually fields of strawberries, before I knew there was an actually song entitled Strawberry Fields. Then once I knew it was more of a tribute to John Lennon, I assumed it would be this extravagant area with Beatles paraphernalia everywhere, statues and the like. When my parents told me “No, it’s just a park” I didn’t understand what the big deal was…since it was “just a park”. Yet walking through Central Park, I was still excited to finally see what all the fuss was about. When we finally got there I couldn’t tell what was considered part of the “Strawberry Fields” and which wasn’t. We finally got towards the entrance to the street when we saw a crowd of people surrounding this big circle with the word IMAGINE engraved in it, and on it laid flowers making a peace sign. There was a candle light and pictures of John Lennon.  John Lennon was killed very close by to the now “Strawberry Fields”, at the Dakota Apartments which him and his wife Yoko Ono lived. A crazed fan was waiting outside his apartment for him one night, and shot him. Since John Lennon was such a huge public figure the world went crazy, especially New Yorkers. He was killed in 1980, and his memorial was created in 1985. The area is known as a Peace Garden because of Lennon’s forever strides to overcome fighting and war in the country. It’s said that the flowers creating a peace sign are put there by a homeless man, who is a devoted fan and gets new flowers every morning to lie here, almost as if it was his grave and tons of people come visit him every day (BG, 290-292).

After leaving Central Park, we walked down the now West Side to 59^th street, where half the class with their aching feet happily walked down the stairs into the subways to get back to Penn Station as fast as possible. I had never really been through Central Park so even though my feet weren’t happy with me, I was glad I got to see so many different parts of it (though I know there was plenty more that I missed). The two different museums we saw weren’t my favorite, though the Del Barrio had a lot of more modern artwork that I really liked because I felt they were more relate-able  then some of the other modern art we’ve seen in the past. One of my favorites was a rainbow that was made out of all different neighborhood shops and stores. All red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple had all the store logos on it and I thought it was really clever to use what was all around you to build something that stands for beauty.