Time Landscape
Landscape artist Alan Sonfist (1946- ) created
Time Landscape as a living monument to the forest that once blanketed
Manhattan Island. He proposed the project in 1965. After extensive research
on New York’s botany, geology, and history Sonfist and local community members
used a palette of native trees, shrubs, wild grasses, flowers, plants, rocks,
and earth to plant the 25' x 40' rectangular plot at the northeast corner of
La Guardia Place and West Houston Street in 1978. The result of their efforts
is a slowly developing forest that represents the Manhattan landscape inhabited
by Native Americans and encountered by Dutch settlers in the early 17th century.
The surrounding neighborhood, now known as Greenwich
Village, was once a marshland dotted with sandy hills that the Canarsie Indians
called the Sapokanican and that the Dutch called the Zantberg. The trout-filled
Minetta Brook ran to the west and made the area a favorite spot for fishing
and duck hunting. Over the course of three-and-a-half centuries, agricultural,
residential, commercial, institutional, and industrial development replaced
the natural marshland with an urban landscape. While numerous manmade features
(such as buildings and streets) preserve the history of 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century
Greenwich Village, Time Landscape serves as a natural landmark of the
17th and prior centuries. This forested plot invites city-dwellers--including
insects, birds, people, and other animals--to experience a bygone Manhattan.
When it was first planted, Time Landscape
portrayed the three stages of forest growth from grasses to saplings to grown
trees. The southern part of the plot represented the youngest stage and now
has birch trees and beaked hazelnut shrubs, with a layer of wildflowers beneath.
The center features a small grove of beech trees (grown from saplings transplanted
from Sonfist’s favorite childhood park in the Bronx) and a woodland with red
cedar, black cherry, and witch hazel above groundcover of mugwort, Virginia
creeper, aster, pokeweed, and milkweed. The northern area is a mature woodland
dominated by oaks, with scattered white ash and American elm trees. Among the
numerous other species in this miniforest are oak, sassafras, sweetgum, and
tulip trees, arrowwood and dogwood shrubs, bindweed and catbrier vines, and
violets. Time Landscape is on city-owned land, assigned
to Transportation. It is maintained by Parks under Greenstreets, a program inaugurated
in 1986 and reintroduced in 1994 to convert paved street properties, like triangles
and malls, into green lawns. Funded through Parks & Recreation’s capital budget,
Greenstreets plants trees and shrubs in the city’s barren street spaces. The
assistance of volunteers keeps these areas clean and their plants healthy.
Thursday, Jul 06, 2000