Patti Smith, Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese Among Those Protesting Demolition of NYC Public Garden

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | August 26, 2024 |

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | August 26, 2024 |

Famous New Yorkers Patti Smith, Robert De Niro, and Martin Scorsese are among those who have written letters to Mayor Eric Adams, protesting plans to demolish Little Italy’s Elizabeth Street Gardens to build affordable senior housing in its place. These three people specifically, of course, are all over the age of 75, and therefore particularly aware of the needs of the elderly.

“It must be said that many of the people who are concerned about losing the garden are the elderly,” said Smith, who instead suggests converting the many empty office and retail buildings throughout the city into housing. “There are many elderly people who have said they’d forfeit the right to live in any new housing, if we would only save the garden.”

The garden is important to her specifically for its powers of creative inspiration.

“I’ve written poems there. I like to sit and think. It’s a good place just to think and contemplate,” she says. She’s the author of a slew of books including the bestsellers Just Kids and M Train, and now she says she’s working on another one, and often goes to the Elizabeth Street gardens to write. “It’s a work in progress and when I was in the garden I was writing about my mother,” she explained. “When I was in the garden I was writing about my mother” is like a poem itself.

“When we do performances there, it’s not like a raucous atmosphere—it’s a very light-hearted, benevolent atmosphere where people are listening,” she explained. “Sometimes I’ve improvised poetry with my daughter in the garden. It’s inspiring. But it’s also calming. Sometimes I might want to go to the garden not to work, but to exist—just to feel blessed by my surroundings.”

“I’ve lived in the city off-and-on for over half a century, and these type of areas are fast diminishing…And they’re worth fighting for,” she added.

It’s a problem all cities are facing—the need for affordable housing, senior or non. But cities also need public, free-entry spaces, cities as large and populated as New York especially. I asked the most famous (former) New Yorker I know, my mother, who also happens to be a senior (sorry mom) what she thinks of this, and though she left the city in the ’80s and so never visited the Elizabeth Street Gardens because they were built in the ’90s, she said, “Green space in NYC is hard to come by. When I lived there Central Park was about it. I’m with Patti on this one.” So, there. Done and dusted as far as I’m concerned.