(Originally
published on June 24, 2013)
It was simply known as “The Garden,” and it was a remarkable piece of
earth. In fact, as time inexorably marches on this garden in the Kingsbridge
section of the Bronx seems more remarkable than ever. Like so many things
from the past, I took it for granted. It flowered throughout my formative years, miraculously
enduring from 1958 to 1971. After all, this was a time when empty lots were fast vanishing from the urban landscape. I was just nine years old
when the garden was plowed under—in the name of progress to make way for one more apartment building—but old enough to remember its incredible uniqueness and beauty in an otherwise
urban landscape.
The elevated subway—carrying the Number 1 train into midtown
Manhattan—was a few blocks away.
The garden flourished on a sprawling empty lot
—multiple empty lots in fact—on the northwest corner
of Tibbett Avenue and W232nd Street. My grandfather and three other men
enclosed the space with a makeshift fence comprised of assorted woods and
metals. The fence was utilitarian—esthetics be damned. Built into it, too, were both front and back entrances—doors that
opened with actual keys that magically slid pieces of wood over to unlock them.
Our Gang kids could not have devised anything better.
Coincidentally,
the garden location was directly across the street from the three-family brick
house my grandfather had purchased and, too, the one where I grew up. When he
originally moved his family, including my father, into the neighborhood in
1947, the man had his heart set on planting a garden. In stark contrast from where
he came from—Manhattan’s Morningside Heights—parts of Kingsbridge were
downright bucolic then. But while my grandfather pined for property with garden
potential, he needed tenants to help pay the mortgage and settled for a cement
backyard and a couple of garages instead.
A friend of my grandfather's—already living in
the neighborhood—told him not to fret about a garden. There were ample empty
lots in the area, he said, in which to plant one. “Victory
gardens”—holdovers from World War II—still existed in the environs of
Kingsbridge, and my grandfather found a workable plot just up the block between
W232nd Street and W231st Street. His garden was one among many garden plots
there. When the whole bunch were evicted so that ground could be broken for
buildings that would subsequently be called "Tibbett Towers," it was
time to look for another location
with the pickings slimmer than ever.
Before the
garden that I came to know bloomed, the realtor, who had the property on the
market, gave the gardeners his blessing. His one proviso was that they keep the
place clean. It was an altogether different world in the late 1950s. The New
York City bureaucracy, for one, was not as intrusive as it is today. Imagine a
contemporary realtor—even with the consent of a property owner—permitting
strangers to build a makeshift fence around the land for sale. And, too,
allowing the construction of tool sheds, an outhouse, a bocce court, and a
horseshoe pit with bleachers. Utilizing a fifty-gallon drum, my grandfather
even dug a well on the property, which tapped into the formerly aboveground
Tibbetts Brook just beneath the surface. This supplied the garden with all the
water needed. He knew there was water down under, because just to the south in his
former garden soil the builders of Tibbett Towers were very literally drowning. The tenacious Tibbetts Brook caused unforeseen and overly
expensive problems in laying the foundations.
In fact, the original builder went
bankrupt. This debacle is possibly why the garden across the street from me
survived as long as it did. Prospective buyers were gun
shy—and with good reason. (The owner of the garden locale reportedly hoped that
the NYPD would build its new 50th Precinct station house there and, of course,
pay his considerable asking price of $1.2 million. It did not happen. They
found a more reasonably priced spot a few blocks away.)
The garden
was amazingly fertile. Tomatoes, eggplants, lettuce, peppers, beans, and onions
were grown there. The tomato crop was so bountiful that my grandparents would
make a year’s worth of tomato sauce with garden-grown tomatoes. My grandfather
once planted 148 tomato plants, which he grew from seed in a hotbox. The Irish
contingent of gardeners grew lots of hearty cabbages because they ate lots of
cabbage. Potatoes may have been the only vegetable tried in the place that came
up lemons. There was something lacking in the Bronx soil.
The
garden, too, had fig trees, peach trees, and an apple tree on the premises.
Flowers were everywhere. Big, bushy marigolds were scattered about because they
repelled bugs worth repelling. Tall sunflowers were bee havens. But what I
remember most about the garden were the parties thrown during holidays and on
summer weekends. Yes, on someone else’s property there were festive barbecues
and, as I recall, free-flowing alcohol. Somebody could have gotten hit
on the head with a horseshoe or fallen into the well and drowned. Just
looking into the well scared me. But people were not conditioned to sue one
another back then, so the realtor and the property owner had little to worry
about.
The garden
was an oasis in a Bronx neighborhood in a tumultuous time for both New York
City and the country at large. When my grandfather passed away in 1965, my
father promptly filled his shoes. I always considered it my father’s garden and
mine by extension. As a boy, I thought it would always be there, but that was
not in the cards. From the perspectives of young and old alike, not only
"The Garden" but an entire era was bulldozed on that sorry day in
October 1971.
(Photos
from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)
