Jake Price

A Plea to Save the Elizabeth Street Garden

The Elizabeth Street Garden, on March 30, 2025. Visitors and volunteers hope it is not the last Sunday that the garden will exist.

When verbal arguments confuse, obfuscate, and deceive, visuals are all we have left. In supporting the garden, my intent is that the appreciation of this place through images may become another possibility for its preservation.

A Stroke of a Pen Can Save the Garden

The Elizabeth Street Garden is facing imminent closure by the City of New York.

It is inconceivable that such a place of respite, healing, great beauty and civic worth would even be considered to be set for demolition-and yet, unless the our elected officials step in, the flowers in the garden will be crushed by bulldozers, trees felled by chainsaws and the statues carted off—to erase this space would represent an act of unconscionable violence wielded upon us by our very own government.

If the garden is closed, siding against the thousands who seek to preserve it, the City will have chosen Pennrose, a Pennsylvania-based development company, over the very people it is meant to serve. Closure by the city could happen at any moment, despite an ongoing federal trial, as the garden clings to its last hope, one day at a time. However, none of this would be necessary if the mayor simply designated the garden as a land trust—a decision he can make with a stroke of the pen for a fee of $1.

To help save the garden please send an urgent message to the governor and mayor.

The following photographs were taken on Sunday, March 30, 2025. Hopefully this will not be the last Sunday for the garden to be enjoyed.

Celebrating a Uniqueness of Place

To destroy this space, especially by an out of state developer, would be a grave injustice to the people of New York City. The Elizabeth Street Garden welcomes the young and elderly, visitors from near and far, and people of all faiths and backgrounds.
The city claims the new development will benefit the elderly, yet they already receive far more from this space than they would from a for-profit corporation intent on destroying it.
Spring leaves sprout. Will the garden survive for other springs to come?
Spring vines envelop the statues as new life awakens.

The city and developers threatening this sanctuary claim their plans, informed more by clip art than anything even remotely touching on anything slightly enlightened, will include greenspace, using the term generically, failing to recognize that store-bought “greenery” can never replace the native plants of New York City that live in the garden, nurtured by volunteers to sustain bird and insect habitats. Nor can it substitute for the carefully selected flora that curators and volunteers have thoughtfully arranged to create a living, breathing ecosystem.

As for housing, there are currently three available city owned lots within a mile of the garden that could serve as suitable locations. Seniors living there would still have access to this rare and restorative space. Rather than destroying the garden, the city should recognize it as an essential resource for their well-being in conjunction with any new housing.

The Sunday Tai Chi Ritual

This past Sunday, beneath gray skies, and despite the chilly and humid morning in the low 50s, the weekly tai chi session carried on, led, as always, by Sherry Zhang. Many familiar faces that I saw during summer’s languid days were present despite the cold and gray, a testament to their dedication and the deep need for this essential regenerative practice.

Sherry Zhang teaches tai chi every weekend in the garden.
The uniqueness of place is equally important as the exercise itself. It’s one of the few places in New York where people can be in nature and exercise at the same time.
The classes happen year round, in the cold and the heat a testament to the need of the class. The gazebo in the rear was designed by the Olmsted Brothers, sons of renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, for the Burrwood Estate in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, in 1898
The age diversity is a testament to the common good that this class provides to the community.

The garden as a work of art in and of itself

On February 18, 2025 A federal lawsuit was filed to protect the Garden under the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), arguing that it is an “irreplaceable physical and social sculpture.”

Elements in the garden evoke the aesthetic of Gilded Age estates. Once an empty lot strewn with heroin needles, crack vials, and the detritus of a collapsing neighborhood, it was transformed into the oasis it is today by Allan Reiver in 1991. Since Allan’s passing in 2021, his son, Joseph, has meticulously tended to the land—planting trees, maintaining the lawns and flowers, and preserving the historically significant stone statuary and architectural elements salvaged from across the East Coast.

The main path that leads one into the garden is reminiscent of Axial layout is a fundamental principle in landscape design, particularly prominent in French formal gardens. It involves organizing garden elements along one or more imaginary lines, creating a sense of order, symmetry, and visual flow.

The winding gravel path, central to the garden’s design, creates a choreographed experience, framing views of sculptures and the flora. From the neoclassical revival mansion Lynnewood Hall outside of Philadelphia, there’s 20th-century limestone balustrade designed by French landscape architect Jacques-Henri-Auguste Gréber, flanked by two large stone lions. From Burrwood Estate in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, there is an iron gazebo designed by the Olmsted Brothers, sons of Frederick Law Olmsted. This mirrors formal European garden traditions, where pathways guide perception and interaction. Reiver’s placement of artifacts (e.g., columns, birdbaths, wrought-iron furniture) alongside native plants and fig trees reflects a collage of materials which Allen said was “to create an oasis of tranquility in the middle of a dense urban environment.”

The sphinx, along with other sculptures in the garden, is considered part of a “nationally significant cultural landscape and work of outsider art” according to the Cultural Landscape Foundation.
The balustrade in Elizabeth Street Garden acts as an axial framing device, similar to how 18th-century gardens used structures to frame views of the surrounding landscape.
The garden also blends British influences that complement the French ones. Off the main path are smaller ones that cut through flower beds, reminiscent of English landscape gardens, which replaced the straight alleys of formal French gardens.
The concept of Elizabeth Street Garden as an outdoor museum stems from its unique blend of art, architecture, and nature. Allan Reiver, the garden’s creator, transformed the space into a cohesive artistic environment. He arranged various sculptural elements to create a unified aesthetic experience, essentially turning the garden into a large-scale sculptural work

The Fig Tree

Every day in the garden has its own rhythm and tempo, making each one unique. After the tai chi classes ended on the east side, volunteers uncovered a fig tree from its winter hibernation on the west side. The 12-year-old tree, donated by an artist from Japan who fell in love with the garden, has since matured into a source of abundance, offering its fruit to volunteers and visitors alike. If it survives, it will continue to nourish all who come here for generations.

Though the weight of the garden’s potential destruction loomed over the morning, a lightness returned as volunteers carefully stripped away the burlap sacks insulated with hay, revealing the tender branches within. With each sack removed, there was a quiet recognition that—for now—the garden was still open, the tree still alive. While the future is uncertain, one thing was clear: if this place is to endure, what we do now will lay the foundation for whatever refuge remains.

To help save this tree and this garden please send an urgent message to the governor and mayor.

The fig tree was donated by a Japanese artist and is 12 years old. In the fall its branches were covered to protect it from the cold of the winter months.
Megan, a volunteer helps unwrap the fig tree for the summer season.
Twine from the tree is preserved and would later be composted. There is not an element in the garden that is wasted.
This is after all an urban garden: Flower embroidered Docs mix with the new classical elements and surrounding nature.
Megan is one of the thousands of volunteers that come to keep the garden thriving throughout the year.
Longtime volunteer and garden organizer Emmanuelle Chiche.
Wilting flowers await composting.
Emmanuelle removes the last burlap from the fig tree. The volunteers know one thing for sure—nature won’t wait for court decisions. Trees need tending, weeds need pulling, and only through their care can this place have a future.

All content © Jake Price 2025