Time Landscape

La Guardia Pl. btw Bleecker & W Houston

Manhattan

Directions via Google Maps

This text is part of Parks’ Historical Signs Project and can be found posted within the park.

In the 1950s the row of tenements and townhouses lining the east side of LaGuardia Place were condemned and demolished to make way for a projected highway construction project that was never realized due to community opposition. As a result, this block remained vacant for decades.

Environmental artist Alan Sonfist (b.1946) conceived of Time Landscape, an homage to the lost forests that once blanketed Manhattan Island, in 1965. Sonfist and the local community extensively researched New York’s botany, geology, and history. In 1978 they used a palette of native trees, shrubs, grasses, flowers, rocks, and earth to recreate the precolonial forest that stood on this 200 x 40-foot rectangular plot. The space offers a dynamic representation of Manhattan’s landscape during the early 17th century as experienced by Native Americans.

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