The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS) Launches First Tour

The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS) launched its first official walking tour this Wednesday, June 20th, 2012 with 30 high school students from Innovation High School in Harlem. The tour was led by the museum’s co-director, Bill Di Paola, with support from community garden member Susan Greenfield and journalist and historian Bill Weinberg.

The tour began at La Plaza Cultural Center with a talk by Bill Di Paola. He opened with a brief history of how East Village and Lower East Side community gardens started with the community’s revitalization of abandoned, rubble-strewn lots. Additionally, he commented on the community’s long-standing resistance of corporate culture.

Bill Di Paola speaks to students at La Plaza Cultural

One of the tour’s highlights including visiting the former CHARAS Community Center at 9th Street and Avenue B. Bill Weinberg educated the students on the history of this space as well as the building the next door, the Christodora, which was originally a social services building but was converted into the neighborhood’s first luxury condominium. Today it stands as the neighborhood’s clearest symbol of gentrification.

Bill Di Paola and Bill Weinberg speaking across the street from the former CHARAS community center

The group also visited Tompkins Square Park, where Weinberg explained the 1980 riots against gentrification and the city’s attempts to impose a curfew on the park.

Susan Greenfield guides students through El Sol Brilliante community garden

The next and final stop was EL Sol Brillante, a cool, shady community garden where volunteer Susan Greenfield showed students the garden’s innovative composting system involving converting fermented food waste into nutrient-rich soil.

Susan Greenfield leads students to the garden's fermentation corner

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Take a tour yourself and see the East Village through a new lens. Regular daily tours will start up in mid-July. Group/custom tours can be arranged today; please e-mail tours@morusnyc.org for more information or call (973) 818-8495.

www.morusnyc.org

Today I had the unparalleled opportunity of going on a mixed tour with the museum. If you don’t already know, the museum will have garden tours, bike tours, squat tours and mixed tours of the neighborhood for exclusive information from first-hand sources. With the mixed tour, I had the opportunity of experiencing a little bit of all the pieces that come together to make this rich lower east side history.

The museum has keys to many of the community gardens you see in the East Village, so I had the luxury of wandering through a couple and even having lunch at one of them! Every garden is so unique in its space and design, it’s no wonder they were individually memorable!

Here are some pictures of some of the gardens:

(Green Oasis Community Garden)

The display of art on doors and walls throughout the east village was excellent! Some of these displays were present in community gardens as you can see below.

(These decorations made out of of waste metal and plastic is on the fence of the la Plaza Cultural Garden.)

The most exciting part of the tour must have been when we got the priceless opportunity of touring a real life squat in the east village. Personally, I would love for Paz, the squatter, to redesign my home. I could almost smell the impeccable level of creativity of squatters when I walked in. This is a view of the main door from inside the building.

So creative! You must see one of these for yourself! Contact MoRUS or check out the rest of this website for more information about tours!