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Many of you may have not been alive in 1968, but those of you who were and walked through Morningside Park near Columbia University during the ACGA convention last July should find this interesting - how local Harlem residents and University students killed a major encroachment in a park and helped create a flower lined pond instead. A feel good story for a rough day. Best wishes, Adam Honigman [EMAIL PROTECTED] /-------------------- advertisement -----------------------\ Explore more of Starbucks at Starbucks.com. http://www.starbucks.com/default.asp?ci=1015 \----------------------------------------------------------/ A Site of Battles, a Piece of Paradise April 20, 2003 By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS A VISITOR stumbling through Morningside Park on a gorgeous spring day might mistake the scene for the entrance to paradise. In the center of the park, water trickles over a rocky amphitheater into a pond ringed with weeping willows and yellow daffodils. The pond teems with ducks, goldfish and a colony of red-eared sliders, the kind of turtles that people buy in Chinatown and then look for a place to leave them. They are thriving. On the bluffs above, at Morningside Drive and 113th Street, stand the saints and turrets of St. John the Divine and the smooth stone face of St. Luke's Hospital. The brownstone streets of Harlem, now with a Dumpster on every block, stretch out below. "I'm thinking how nice it would be if we got to swim in that pond and you could catch turtles," a little girl said to a little boy as they squatted next to the water. They managed to stay dry. In the late 1960's, the picture could not have been more different. The park was overgrown with weeds. This newspaper called it "a haven for muggers and a paradise for purse snatchers." As Peter Kirchheimer, Columbia class of '68, recalled, the park was a physical and metaphysical barrier between the university above and Harlem below. Columbia University's president, Grayson Kirk, had signed a 100-year lease for two acres of the park at 113th Street, a deal initiated in the 50's by Robert Moses, the powerful parks commissioner and slum clearer. With the consent of the state and city, Columbia wanted to build a gymnasium in the middle of the park, with a back door for Harlem residents. Thirty-five years ago this Wednesday, Columbia students took over the campus. They were protesting the gym, Columbia's sponsorship of war research, what they saw as the highhandedness of the academy. They stopped the gym, if not the war. The pond that looks so natural - as if it were part of the original design by Olmsted and Vaux - was built where Columbia had dynamited the natural rocks for the gym foundation. Christiane Collins, who was a faculty wife then, remembers the booms. Mr. Kirchheimer, now a Legal Aid lawyer, was arrested on the spot in 1968. An unsung hero of the uprising was Thomas Hoving, the former parks commissioner. He said Columbia was getting "an extraordinary deal" at the expense of Harlem. The university, he suggested, would never dare build a gym in Central Park at 72nd Street, where he lived. By 1968, Mr. Hoving was no longer commissioner, but a Columbia trustee bitterly fingered him as the one who planted "the germ" of the student uprising. "Yes, I am responsible for instigating the thing against Columbia University," Mr. Hoving said cheerfully last week. He gleefully recounted how he and Percy Sutton, then the Manhattan borough president, had done a Christo, stringing toilet paper around the perimeter of the gym site, so people could see how huge it was. Some felt Mr. Hoving had betrayed his social class by opposing the gym, he said. "My father was the owner of Tiffany,'' he explained. "They felt I was Mr. Club Man.'' Mr. Hoving later served as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Maybe it's coincidence, or maybe history is repeating itself. The other day, Adrian Benepe, the current parks commissioner, toured Van Cortlandt Park with a group of concerned Bronx citizens. The Bloomberg administration wants state permission to use 23 acres of parkland for an underground water filtration plant. Christopher O. Ward, the city environmental commissioner, said most of the land would be restored after construction, and water bonds would be sold to improve Bronx parks. Similarly, in 1968, Columbia said Harlem would benefit from refurbished athletic fields. But whatever the merits of the Van Cortlandt plan, and as Mr. Hoving said long ago, it is hard to imagine the city confiscating parkland where it would disturb the interests of people living on 72nd Street. Maggie Lee, who lives across the street from Morningside Park, remembers what it was like to fight to preserve the sanctity of city parkland. After 1968, she said, the park was almost as dead as the gym. "We didn't have any flowers or anything," she said. The weeds were five feet high. She and her neighbors started a flower club. Now, the Parks Department hacks weeds and plants flowers. Columbia students help out. New arrivals, like Doug Robinson, a systems analyst, organize double-Dutch competitions. "I was there yesterday, watching my grandkids on the sliding boards," Ms. Lee said. "I feel the park is for everyone to enjoy. My kids have enjoyed it; now my grandkids." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/20/nyregion/20ctyCOLU.html?ex=1051948268&ei=1&en=08112e0bcaab13b5 HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company ______________________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: https://secure.mallorn.com/mailman/listinfo/community_garden
