BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | The dedication of the NYC AIDS Memorial at St. Vincent’s Triangle on Dec.1, World AIDS Day, was cause for celebration and somber reflection — as well as determination in the face of a new administration in Washington that may try to roll back the L.G.B.T. gains of the last eight years and beyond. As well as civil-rights concerns, advocates fear that healthcare funding impacting L.G.B.T. people and the services they rely on could be cut.
The memorial, the brainchild of two young planners, Christopher Tepper and Paul Kelterborn, cost roughly $6.5 million. About $4 million of that came from city and state government funding.
A white steel trellis occupying the small triangular park’s eastern corner, the memorial rises 18 feet tall. It also features a small granite fountain, benches and paving engraved with phrases from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” The elegant structure will be subtly illuminated at night.
The NYC AIDS Memorial, along with the entire park, will be transferred to the city’s Parks Department early in 2017. Rudin Management built the park as part of its redevelopment of the former St. Vincent’s Hospital main campus into the Greenwich Lane — a high-end residential complex.
The Greenwich Lane’s condo association has separate agreements with the Parks Department and the NYC AIDS Memorial group to fund the future maintenance of both the park and the memorial in perpetuity.
This is actually the second AIDS memorial in the Village. The first was quietly dedicated in 2008 in Hudson River Park overlooking the old pile field of the former Pier 49, between W. 11th and 12th Sts. That one is a 42-foot-long curved bench of black granite. Carved into its surface is a simple lyric from a traditional Finnish folk song: “I can sail without wind, I can row without oars, but I cannot part from my friend without tears.” It cost around $90,000. However, the majority of the park’s users who pass by the low-key monument may well be unaware that it is, in fact, an AIDS memorial.
On the other hand, the new NYC AIDS Memorial, at Greenwich Ave. and W. 12th St., is more centrally located in the heart of the Village. More to the point, it sits right on part of the property formerly occupied by St. Vincent’s Hospital, which led the way in treating the victims of the deadly plague in its early years.
