Friday, October 11, 2013
Revised Project Description
The Pansy Patch Queer Home Project
A public art installation by
Whitfield CoLabs
To be installed on Dean Street
between Third and Fourth Avenues from April 15 to May 15, 2014
The Pansy Patch Queer Home Project
What creates a queer
neighborhood? A gathering of places
queer people call home. In the late 1960’s through the 1980’s, for a number of gay
men, the block between Third and Fourth Avenues on Dean Street in Brooklyn was
their neighborhood and distinguished, for a while, by an outward display of
domesticity and pride of place. For a while, because these neighbors, had a
gardener who filled their front yards with hardy large violas, and create a
place known to the inhabitants in and around the area as Pansy Patch.
In the spring of 2014,
Whitfield CoLabs will commemorate the transformation of that block with a public
art installation recalling the visual pleasure of these gardens while exploring
what it means to make a home as a LGBTQ person. Highlighting stories gathered
in Queer Home Sweet Home events that
will inform a Queer Home Manifesto that will be written during A Queer Home Summit in November, The Pansy Patch Queer Home Project will
help us envision the happy and healthy queer home of the future.
The installation will consist
of eight 4’w x 2’d x 3’h wooden planters filled with pansies. In a cavity beneath the container that hold
the plants will be installed PIR Motion Sensors,
equipped with mp3 players utilizing an SD card for the pre-recorded
audio. The sensors, brought to the surface of the planter, will detect
light change: once a threshold is reached with a change in the light
surrounding the planter, the mp3 track will play a narrative. Once the
user leaves the sensed area, the audio will cease. Additionally, once
sunset occurs, an LED lighting inside the planter will complement the colors of
the planted flowers. Emanating from the speakers will be edited stories of
queer home life that have been recorded during Queer Home Sweet Home sessions in the fall of 2013. The exterior of the planter will be
silkscreened with text from the manifesto produced during the Queer Home Summit.
Recognition of
the individuals who contributed to this project (with their permission) will be
inscribed into the lower section of the planters. At the end of the project, the planters will
be donated to the community.
Preliminary Phase: Queer Home Sweet Home
Queer Home Sweet Home is a series of workshops designed to gather stories
about the queer experience of the notion of home. How do we define home? What defined that as
we grew up? What defines that for us
now? What is the home we imagine? How do we go about realizing that
concept? These convenings have been specifically
seek to record the experience of diverse groups of queer people of varying ages
and backgrounds. Their stories will
edited for inclusion in motion activated loops that will be intrinsic to The Pansy Patch Queer Home Project. These stories will also provide the
background for A Queer Home Summit at
which a manifesto will be produced geared to codifying what queer people should
be able to experience and achieve in their home lives.
Queer Home Sweet Home story gathering sessions will take place on:
Saturday, Oct 5 from 2:30 to
4:00 at Great Small Works, 20 Jay
Street
in association with the On the (Queer) Waterfront:
Brooklyn Histories sponsored by the
Pop-Up Museum of Queer History
Tuesday, Oct 15 from 6:30 to
8:30 at Brooklyn Community Pride Center,
4 Metro Tech Center
Tuesday, Oct 29 from 6:30 to
8:30 at Brooklyn Community Pride Center,
4 Metro Tech Center
Saturday, Nov 2 from 2:30 to
4:30 at Great Small Works, 20 Jay Street
as well
Queer Home Summit will be held on:
Saturday, Nov 16 from 2:00
to 4:30 at Brooklyn Woods, 125 8th Street
The Pansy Patch Queer Home Project: Background
By late 1960’s, the block
between Third and Fourth Avenue on Dean Street in Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill, had
become the home of a community of gay men, many of whom lived in rooming houses
and communes, were young, working class, and active in NYC’s layered gay
culture. To define the community and
beautify the rundown gathering of wooden townhouses, one of the building owners
hired a young gay man to serve as the neighborhood gardener, tending to the
small yards in front of their homes. The
gardener embraced the task and planted pansies throughout the string of
gardens. Eventually the area became know
as Pansy Patch to the inhabitants, the surrounding community and the local
bureaucracy including the police. Among
the neighborhood’s most famous occupants was Ernest Aron, later known as Liz
Debbie Eden, the transsexual partner of John Wojtowicz, the gay man whose story
was the basis of the film, “Dog Day Afternoon.”
In addition to these
residents, that block was also home to Sarah J. Hale High School which would
eventually be designated a “failing” school by the Board of Education. In the last decade the school has become the
Brooklyn High School of the Arts, a successful magnate school
(www.brooklynartshs.org).
Since that period the block
has been home to generations of queer people who took part in successive waves
of gentrification transforming the area from a low income largely black and
Latino neighborhood to an affluent, largely white enclave of nuclear
families. This classic gentrification
story was influenced by AIDS and the fact that it hastened the turnover of
ownership of these properties, as well as the major Central Brooklyn real
estate project in the old Atlantic Terminal railroad yards (now The Barclay
Center,) two blocks away.
Whitfield CoLabs, under the
direction of Tony Whitfield will seek to unearth the history of that area
during a Pre-AIDS era when an early wave of gentrification took place and the
neighborhood, characterized by group or communal living, was known as Pansy
Patch.
The Project’s Genesis
With the redevelopment of Atlantic Terminal in its
early phases numerous articles appeared on the area. One in particular caught the attention of
Tony Whitfield, then a resident of the block of Deans Street between Fourth and
Fifth Avenue (one block closer to the contested real estate. That article was written by Josh Goldfein in
the Village Voice under the title, “Beyond Pansy Patch.” (www.villagevoice.com/2004-01-13/news/beyond-the-pansy-patch/) It
revealed a history of the neighborhood that he had not known despite the fact
that he was queer and recognized the presence and relative comfort of the
neighborhood for queer people. For Whitfield, who was ultimately pushed out of
the neighborhood by the wave of gentrification that ensued, the story of Pansy
Patch remained resonant and spurred on the development The Pansy Patch Queer Home Project.
To date support for the Pansy Patch Queer Home
Project has been provided by The Pop-Up Museum of Queer History with funds from
the Brooklyn Arts Council and the DUMBO Business Improvement District, as well
as In-kind contributions from The New School.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
QHSH Poster for Oct 15 Session
Poster for Queer Home Sweet Home Oct 15 session reflects changes in the creative development of the project. Whitfield Koelsch Collab is now Whitfield CoLabs. In kind support from The New School is also acknowledged.
Monday, October 7, 2013
The Questions asked at Queer Home Sweet Home
THE PANSY
PATCH QUEER HOME PROJECT
THE
QUESTIONNAIRE
What
does home mean to you?
How
old are you?
Where did you grow up?
What was the physical layout of your home?
Where did you grow up?
What was the physical layout of your home?
Who
did you live with?
How would you describe your family’s background?
How would you describe your family’s background?
Did
you come out to the people you grew up with? If so, when and how?
Looking
back, do you think the people you lived with understood your sexuality or
gender identity before you told them? Why do you think that?
Can
you tell me something you remember about your family’s reaction to your
sexuality or gender expression?
Were
there aspects of your home that made you feel validated or special?
Were there aspects of your home that made you feel different or uncomfortable?
Were there aspects of your home that made you feel different or uncomfortable?
Were
substance abuse or addictions part of your homelife?
Was
violence part of your home experience?
How
would you describe the economic conditions you lived under?
Were
there health issues you grew up aware of?
Could
you talk about your family’s relationship to their bodies?
Were
there any major events that changed the dynamics in your home? Illness? Deaths?
Births? Divorce?
Were
there aspects of your home life that you were proud of or ashamed of? What role
did you play in those aspects?
Were
there aspects of your home life that you feared? What role did you play in
those aspects?
Where were you most comfortable when you were growing up? Why did you like it there?
Where were you most comfortable when you were growing up? Why did you like it there?
Describe
a situation you have inhabited and loved after your childhood.
Describe
a situation you have inhabited and disliked after your childhood.
In
making a home now, what is important to you?
What
should you expect in your home?
What
should not be part of your home?
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Rezoning Park Slope
from the New York Times
Rezoning, and Redefining, Park Slope
TEN years ago, when Karen Brenner first moved to Park Slope, she settled in a rented one-bedroom floor-through on Third Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. In 2001 she moved again. She bought a two-bedroom apartment in a newly built 36-unit condominium called Park Slope Estates on Second Street between Fifth and Fourth Avenues.
To outsiders that might not seem like a big change. Geographically, it isn't. But Park Slope residents long believed that housing down the slope from Fifth Avenue was much less desirable than housing on the more easterly blocks off Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Avenues as far as Prospect Park West at the park itself. Fifth Avenue was dismal as a commercial street, and it was a psychological boundary from the standpoint of housing value.
In the last three years or so, this has changed.
''Fifth Avenue is becoming the new trendy street, like Smith Street in Carroll Gardens,'' said Ms. Brenner, a television editor in her 30's. ''In 1991 you wouldn't go there at night to find a hamburger. Now you can get a full meal any time of day.''
You can also find new housing on the side streets, as Ms. Brenner did. For the striking phenomenon in Park Slope, especially though not exclusively between Fifth Avenue and Fourth Avenue, is the presence of new construction on large midblock parcels of the Lower Slope.
Most of the buildings recently completed or in construction are on land that was formerly vacant or else occupied by commercial buildings.
Over the last year buyers have been paying about $335 to $440 a square foot for new apartments throughout Park Slope, based on 36 closings, said Peggy D. Aguayo of the firm of Aguayo & Huebener. Based on 43 sales now under contract, prices have risen to $368 to $535 a square foot, she said. Last month, for example, a buyer paid $369,985, or $406 a square foot, for a 910-square-foot two-bedroom two-bath condominium under construction on Sackett Street. Occupancy is to start in the spring.
Now a rezoning adopted in April has set in motion plans for new 12-story buildings along Fourth Avenue. The rezoning encompasses most of the blockfronts from Warren to 15th Street, on both sides of the street, excluding those with significant commercial or industrial activity. The rezoning also adjusts regulations between Fourth Avenue and Prospect Park West to assure the preservation of low-rise buildings. (Details of the rezoning, Page 7.)
''This was a perfect opportunity to balance preservation with growth,'' said Amanda Burden, chairwoman of the City Planning Commission. ''We were beginning to see some sore-thumb buildings, while Fourth Avenue could accommodate apartment-house construction.'' Contextual rezoning was adopted for northern Park Slope blocks in 1992, but the new rezoning extends the concept to a far larger area.
The city councilmen from Park Slope -- David Yassky and Bill de Blasio -- expressed satisfaction about the new zoning in general but disappointment in its failure to require builders to provide a certain amount of moderate-income housing in exchange for the right to build taller structures on Fourth Avenue. ''We're concerned about the need to maintain economic integration,'' Mr. Yassky said.
Mr. de Blasio noted that the Bloomberg administration had agreed to make funds available to create 133 units of moderate-income housing within the new zoning district in the next five years.
As broadly defined by brokers marketing real estate there, Park Slope runs all the way from Flatbush Avenue on the north to the Prospect Park Expressway on the south, and from Prospect Park and Prospect Park West to Fourth Avenue on the east. The April rezoning actually goes as far as Third Avenue on some blocks, and only to 15th Street on the south.
While census tracts do not precisely coincide with these boundaries, the area had an approximate population of 62,200 in 2000, and there were 29,800 housing units. Over 20 years, the population has declined but the number of housing units has increased. The 1980 census showed a population of 65,200 and 29,000 housing units.
The population decline reflects the influx of younger people replacing older households, bringing a drop in average household size. ''There's been an influx of a lot of singles and people living with roommates,'' said Joseph Salvo, director of the population division of the Department of City Planning.
Concurrently, the new arrivals have raised the proportion of college graduates in Park Slope. They were 60 percent of the people over the age of 25 in 2000, census figures show. In 1990 they were 49.5 percent.
HISTORICALLY, the most desirable blocks, with the highest housing prices, have been along the park and on the park-bounded side streets from President Street perhaps as far as Sixth Street, brokers say. Typical sales prices last year for one- and two-family homes ranged from $1.3 million to $2 million, and occasionally more. The Park Slope Historic District overlaps some blocks of this area and extends beyond it to the north and east.
The slope of Park Slope descends gradually from northeast to southwest, leading to the terminology North Slope (from Flatbush Avenue to Union Street), Center Slope (from the south side of Union Street to Fifth or Sixth Streets) and South Slope beyond that. Residents of the southeastern part of the slope, near Prospect Park Southwest, know it as Windsor Terrace.
''Originally, everything south of Ninth Street was just 'South Brooklyn,' '' said Billy Stephens, senior vice president in the Brooklyn office of the Corcoran Group. ''In the mid-70's Park Slope went as far as 15th Street. As time went on, the whole South Slope became 'Park Slope.' ''
Prices for existing housing in Park Slope typically diminish farther down the slope and farther from the park. Most houses have at least one rental. Resales prices for two-families distant from the park in the South Slope, for example, would probably be in a range of $700,000 to $800,000, brokers say. A two-bedroom floor-through condominium in the Center Slope between Sixth Avenue and Seventh Avenue might sell in the range of $550,000 to $650,000.
Native Brooklynites would be surprised to hear any of the blocks below Fifth Avenue defined as Park Slope at all. But the name seemed justified to Jean Miele, a landscape photographer who grew up in Park Slope and now lives in the Park Slope Estates condominium on Second Street between Fourth and Fifth Avenues.
Mr. Miele and his wife, Carol Guasti, were living the Chelsea section of Manhattan when they decided to move. Now they and their daughter, Cally, 12, live in an 1,800-square-foot duplex. ''We needed more space and we're close to a great middle school -- M.S. 51,'' said Mr. Miele, who is president of his condominium's board.
The man whose development work has been primarily responsible for expanding the concept of Park Slope to reach Fourth Avenue is Isaac Katan, the developer of Park Slope Estates. Either on its own or in partnerships, Katan Developers has put into construction 260 apartments in the area, mainly on side streets in attached four-story elevator buildings with eight units each. And Katan is in the design phase for about 400 more.
''We cultivated the edge of the neighborhood at a time when nobody wanted to move there,'' Mr. Katan said. New projects now in construction or design on or near Fourth Avenue will have a sales value of about $350 million, he said, and will transform parts of Fourth Avenue into ''the Park Avenue of Brooklyn.''
Park Slope Estates, with 38 condominium apartments in six buildings, was the first project of its kind in the area. Mr. Katan's partners in the project were Boymelgreen Developers of Brooklyn, which did the construction, and the Fatato family, prior owners of the land. Bricolage Designs of Borough Park was the architect of record, and Ken Yesmont of Manhattan was the design architect.
Other projects in construction for occupancy next year are City View Gardens, 46 units in five buildings on Second and Third Streets, plus 75 rental apartments in a 12-story building bordering Fourth Avenue; Park Slope Terrace, with 38 condominiums in a five-story elevator building on Sackett Street; and Park Slope Gardens, 30 condominiums in three five-story elevator buildings on Second and Third Streets. Two unnamed projects - on Dean Street, between Fourth and Fifth Avenues, and on Bergen Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues - will have a total of 36 condominiums in three four- and five-story elevator buildings.
''We will have 225 condominiums to sell in the spring,'' Mr. Katan said.
The sales agent for this inventory is Aguayo & Huebener Realty Group. In 65 sales of new housing for the Katan group and other builders in the last two years, Ms. Aguayo said, 40 to 50 percent of the buyers have come from outside Park Slope.
''Most are couples with a child already or planning a family,'' she said. The local schools have a high reputation among buyers, she said.
Katan partnerships are designing 10 additional developments on or near Fourth Avenue, Mr. Katan said. They will produce close to 600 housing units. Six of them will have frontages on Fourth Avenue, with residential entrances on a side street, and some will have 100 apartments or more. As the new zoning provides, the typical Fourth Avenue building will rise in a street wall of 80 or 85 feet -- eight floors -- and then set back for a four-story element. It is too early to report the precise sites, Mr. Katan said.
Mr. Yesmont, the design architect for most of the low-rise projects, said he tried to fulfill the goal of transporting Park Slope charm to the area with the use of copper mansard roofs, limestone arches at the entrances, smaller arches at the parapet level where the roof starts, and curved railings on the outdoor terraces.
''The colors of brick reflect the colors of surrounding buildings,'' Mr. Yesmont said.
Bricolage Designs of Borough Park has been the architect of record for many of the current projects in Park Slope and elsewhere in Brooklyn. Henry Radusky, the principal in the firm, said that over the next 12 to 18 months the eight that are recently completed or in construction by developers other than Mr. Katan would bring 200 new housing units to the market.
Several of these projects are single buildings that are higher than would be allowed under the April rezoning. For example, there is a seven-story two-building project on the southeast corner of Fourth Avenue and President Street, nearing completion, that would be two stories too high in its President Street element, but conforming along Fourth Avenue if it had been designed under the new zoning rules. The builder is Zoriano Inc. of Brooklyn.
Another builder is the Goldmedal Group, in which Mendel Goldshmid is a principal. Goldmedal is in midconstruction on a five-story 30-unit condominium on 15th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, with occupancy expected next summer. There will be three entrances to three connected elevator buildings. It will have a landscaped backyard of 4,000 square feet.
At 101 Prospect Park Southwest, a new 15-unit six-story building shaped like the Flatiron Building in Manhattan, caused local controversy as a view blocker before construction. Nearing completion, the condominiums sold out at an average price of $400 a square foot, the developer, Manny Reiner, said.
NOT all has gone smoothly in the new construction. At Park Slope Estates on Second Street, Mr. Miele, the president of the condominium association, spoke of excessive delay in fixing roof leaks that have been persistent for more than a year. ''It's been a struggle, and it's still not quite complete,'' he said.
The builders, meanwhile, are trying to attract buyers from Manhattan. Representative of these buyers in recent weeks were Lara Eshkenazi and James Matheson, a couple who were living in cramped space on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. They have gone into contract on a two-bedroom three-bath apartment with 1,500 square feet of space on Sackett Street, for occupancy early next year. Its price is $590,000.
''We couldn't get the same space for that money in Manhattan,'' said Ms. Eshkenazi, a lawyer who works downtown. ''And we have friends who settled in the neighborhood. They love it.''
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Josh Goldfein's article on Pansy Patch
Beyond the Pansy Patch
In the future shadow of the Nets, a Brooklyn nabe remembers what's at stake
My nameless neighborhood—the blocks above and around Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue and PacificStreet subway station—has suddenly become hot property. Developer Bruce Ratner wants to build a small town, including an arena for the Nets, on top of the one that's already here. ("We have to get over the Dodgers," he's remarked.)
A lively network of residents has organized to oppose Ratner's vision; their first problem is explaining what's at stake. We're steps away from Prospect Heights and Fort Greene and Park Slope and Boerum Hill, areas that conjure images of the best of brownstone living, but we're not really part of them. Many people seem surprised that anybody here sees something worth saving.
Our house is on Dean Street between Third and Fourth avenues, just shy of Ratner's footprint. The block was an infamous prostitution market as recently as 10 years ago, but in the years after Stonewall and Vietnam and before AIDS and gentrification, it was also an oasis of gay rooming houses and communes. It even had a name.
spirit of the place. He lived on the first floor in the front and was generous to a fault, inviting in whoever he saw passing by. "There were always 10 people in the kitchen," remembers Audrey, a painter and occasional resident. In her Park Slope studio she keeps photographs of our backyard crowded with people and heaping platters of food; a few of the portraits on her walls were painted here.
Carl was more of an innovator than a renovator. He built leaded windows out of salvaged stained glass, an interior wall out of windowpanes, and a greenhouse from scraps. He found his furniture and decor in the street, an aesthetic still prevalent on the block, and he treasured a scrapbook left by a woman from Alabama who had lived here as a roomer decades before. He died of AIDS in 1991, before any practical treatment was available, and in his last years he became a prisoner of his own tenants. Tom and Ann, the renovators who bought the place from Carl's estate, took possession of the still-occupied house and kept their door padlocked from whichever side of it they were on. When the last of Carl's men moved, they shoveled out a deep carpet of used needles from his room. My son sleeps there now. When I carry him to the changing table, I hear the echo of the works crunching underfoot.
Tom and Ann restored the plaster walls, peeled up layers of piss-soaked linoleum, and erased subdivisional partition walls. They lived here with their own extended family, just as the first residents must have. We paid a price well above the cost of their labor, a price many here thought was astronomical, and hence proved Bruce Ratner's point: This neighborhood has arrived.
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