I recently discovered the Elizabeth Street Garden in Little Italy, which is beautiful and quiet and very unassuming. It is midway up the square block that has Elizabeth Street to the east, Mott to the west, Prince to the north, and Spring to the south. The entrance is on Elizabeth between Prince and Spring:
Here's a look facing west from just inside the entrance:
And facing east from the Mott Street side of the garden:
A cool feature of the garden is that it has many sculptures and objects scattered about the grounds.
There's something about this sitting figure that I really liked:
The garden is not usually crowded, and there are plenty of places to sit.
There aren't any big streets surrounding the garden, so traffic and general noise is pretty minimal.
The garden is a certified wildlife habitat, which is pretty great.
The notice to the right in the above photo is about the danger of the garden being destroyed to make way for affordable housing. People in the community are trying to fight this.
The garden's website says that it is a rare patch of nature in the neighborhood, and "Little Italy and SoHo account for 23 percent of [Community Board] 2’s population but
have only 3 percent of its open space, nearly all of which is paved..."
There
are representatives, along with parks and community groups, that are
supporting the cause to save the garden. I hope they succeed,
because even though affordable housing is important, green spaces in the
city are valuable and necessary for peoples' health and well-being.
Maybe there's another space that could be used for the housing, because as the garden's website says, "Green space, once developed, can never be reclaimed, and no one is tearing down buildings to create parks."
One of my recent visits to the garden was on Earth Day, which was April 22. There were some nice signs in the garden for the day, and they also had a tree planting event scheduled in the late afternoon.
While I was visiting on Earth Day, a crochet artist named London Kaye was hanging up some works on the outside fence of the garden on Elizabeth Street.
On her Instagram post of them, she wrote:
Fortunately they were still there when I visited the garden several days later:
Here are some nice plants in the garden.
It was fascinating to see these folks just sprouting:
I don't know what this structure was, or is, but it has an interesting shape:
And this little birdhouse was just... can I use the word precious?
A few more looks inside the garden:
I wish I knew what this device was. It looks interesting:
I suppose I don't have much more to say about the Elizabeth Street Garden. But since a picture is worth a thousand words, I've already pretty much written a short novel about it. Anyway it's a wonderful place, so visit if you can. And let's hope it's still there in the years ahead.
Since this first post is sort of a trial run, I chose for my first block a small side street with only one thing on it: a branch of the New York Public Library. Also, I was going there anyway to pick up a book, but never mind all that.
This street is one block south of Houston Street and I suppose it's right around the border between SoHo and Little Italy, if you're into that sort of information.
As you can see, this is the Mulberry Street Branch, even though the entrance is actually on Jersey Street. So why didn’t they call it the Jersey Street Branch? New Yorkers tend to look down on things named Jersey, even apparently those working at the public library. When a town’s library, of all places, wants nothing to do with you, it’s safe to say you’re not liked there.
The book drop outside can be seen in the photo and is very convenient, but it’s only for books. Don’t you dare put a DVD in there. What happens if you do? You’ll be given season tickets to the Brooklyn Nets and forced to attend every game.
While I’m on the subject of basketball, here is my list of the 3 best players ever:
1. Kristaps Porzingis
2. Michael Jordan
3. Bill Russell
I think that’s a pretty definitive list. I’m not even sure what the argument against it would be.
Here’s a photo looking at the intersection with Mulberry Street:
You might be able to see in the photo that just across from the library is a small cemetery, which is great for creating the right mood to settle in and read some heavy literary classics.
Here’s a photo looking the other way, towards Lafayette Street:
They really want you to stop.
Seen on the right side of the photo is a nice old-looking brick building, which complements nicely the library's nice new-looking brick building on the left. If you stand at the library's entrance and look across, you can see a restaurant through this building's windows. Try not to be a peeping Tom about it, though.
I found the restaurant's entrance around the corner on Mulberry Street and saw that it was named Chef’s Club. I didn’t go in or anything but it seemed like a nice place. Pretty upscale. In the window was an A rating from the health inspectors, so congrats to them for that!
Since the entrance to Chef's Club is on Mulberry Street, I'm not going to count it as technically being on the Jersey Street block that I'm writing about. But I'm not adamant in this position, and I'm willing to hear arguments that it should count.
I think that’s about all I’ve got for this block. Even though it’s a side street with just one thing, that one thing is a nice library, so it’s a good block in my book. Or blog. Whatever. Anyway I recommend it, and I’ll try to find another interesting block for my next post. Maybe even one with multiple things on it. Maybe.
