New York City AIDS Memorial

The New York City AIDS Memorial is a public memorial in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City built "to honor New York City's 100,000+ men, women and children who have died from AIDS, and to commemorate and celebrate the efforts of the caregivers and activists."[1][2] It is the first major space that is dedicated to the epidemic in New York City.[1] The memorial was opened on World AIDS Day on December 1, 2016. The design was developed by the efforts of nearly 500 architects who came up with the idea of an 18-foot steel canopy as the gateway to the new St. Vincent's Hospital Park in Greenwich Village.[3][4]

NYC AIDS Memorial Park sculpture at St Vincent's Triangle in Greenwich Village.

Description
"It is impossible to convey the horror of such an epidemic and the injustice and stigma experienced by those directly affected, but public memorials serve as important reminders of our history, our shared values and the actions and attitudes we put forth as a public body during moments of crisis. This memorial should serve, in future epidemics, both as a reminder of the dangers created, when we allow fear to rule, and of the positive outcomes that result when we unite to fight discrimination and seek solutions to our common ills."

Stephan Jaklitsch, architect, LGBTQ Nation[5]

NYC AIDS Memorial Park reflecting fountain at St Vincent's Triangle in Greenwich Village.

The New York City AIDS Memorial is located on the triangular traffic island formed by 12th Street, Greenwich Avenue and Seventh Avenue in Greenwich Village. The memorial is a gateway to a new public park adjacent to the former St. Vincent's Hospital, which housed the city's first and largest AIDS ward and which is often considered the symbolic epicenter of the disease, figuring prominently in The Normal Heart, Angels in America, and other important pieces of literature and art that tell the story of the plague years in New York.[3]

The memorial consists of an 18-foot (5.5 m) high steel canopy covering about 1,600 square feet (150 m2). The structure is composed by triangles ranging from scalene to equilateral. Three triangles serve as legs to connect two large triangles at the top, so that it looks like an open airplane. Each of the triangles is filled with 16 smaller triangles and all have lines like air vents that light up in the night.[3][6]

History
NYC AIDS Memorial Park at St Vincent's Triangle in Greenwich Village, supported by the NYC Parks Department.

In November 2011, in collaboration with magazine Architectural Record and industry database Architizer, the NYC AIDS board announced an international design competition to manufacture memorial park. Brooklyn-based Studio a+i, led by Mateo Paiva, Lily Lim and Esteban Erlich, won the contest and became memorial park architects. The memorial also features the work of visual artist Jenny Holzer whose idea was to engrave a granite panel with lines from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself".[3][7]

Further reading
  • Schwartz, Alexandra (8 December 2016). "New York's Necessary New AIDS Memorial". The New Yorker. Retrieved 12 January 2017.
  • Basu, Shumita (1 December 2016). "New York City Dedicates a New AIDS Memorial". WNYC News. WNYC. Retrieved 12 January 2017.
  • "New York City Remembers the AIDS Epidemic". The Brian Lehrer Show. WNYC. 1 December 2016. Retrieved 12 January 2017. (Audio interview with David France, author of How to Survive a Plague.)

References
  1. "New York City AIDS Memorial Dedication". Visual AIDS. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
  2. Michael O'Loughlin (December 8, 2019). "The Catholic hospital that pioneered AIDS care". Plague: Untold Stories of AIDS & the Catholic Church (Podcast). America. Retrieved January 10, 2019.
  3. "The New York City AIDS Memorial". The New York City AIDS Memorial. Retrieved 2017-01-12.
  4. "The New York City AIDS Memorial". The New York City AIDS Memorial. Retrieved 1 December 2018.
  5. Taylor, Jeff (1 December 2016). "New York City AIDS Memorial unveiled on World AIDS Day". LGBTQ Nation. Retrieved 12 January 2017.
  6. Plitt, Amy (1 December 2016). "NYC's AIDS Memorial Is Dedicated, at Last, in the West Village". Curbed NY. Retrieved 12 January 2017.
  7. Finn, Robin (January 30, 2012). "Envisioning a Perpetual Look for a Memorial AIDS Park". The New York Times-City Room. Retrieved January 12, 2017.

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