Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at why some building owners are raising constitutional objections to everyday eyesores in New York City. We’ll also get details on a mayoral candidate who says that hiring more police officers is not the solution to concerns about crime.
The apartment building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx is unremarkable, except for its place in history. It is where, at parties in the 1970s with a resident named Clive Campbell running the turntables, hip-hop got its start, and Campbell became famous as D.J. Kool Herc.
Today the building is like thousands of others in New York City. It has been surrounded by a sidewalk shed for years. The repair work that necessitated the scaffolding is only now beginning.
On Friday, a lawyer for the development group that operates the building is to appear before an administrative judge. At issue is a $2,500 fine assessed because the development group put “signage that is prohibited” on the sidewalk shed, according to a Department of Buildings inspector. The inspector said that the images were “a pictorial representation” and “advertising.”
The development organization, Workforce Housing Group, says that the images are art. It commissioned the artist Desire Nobility One to create the images.
Last year, a few months after her mural went up on Sedgwick Avenue, the city started a program called City Canvas to put designs on sheds chosen by the Department of Cultural Affairs. Developers and building owners don’t have to use one of those designs. They can put up their own artwork, once the department has sanctioned it. The department has restrictions, which include no obscenities, hate speech, sexual content or advertising.
John Crotty, a founder of Workforce Housing, said the organization had not applied for approval and should not have to. “This is a First Amendment issue,” he said. “The government can’t dictate the standard for artistic expression or messaging. It feels like a total overreach.”
Crotty said the building had needed structural work for several years, mostly repairs to the brickwork and balconies. Workforce Housing applied for a city-backed loan to cover the cost, and while he acknowledged that it had taken time to get it, “we cleared all the hurdles” last year. But Workforce Housing is still waiting for the money to be transferred to its account, Crotty said.
As for the mural, he said that Workforce Housing had been approached by one of the artists from City Canvas. He summarized the pitch as “we have to use one of the city designers.”
“I was like, we can’t go away from who we are,” he said. The principals at Workforce Housing are “pretty big fans” of the hip-hop history at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, “and we’ve got a designer who’s in that world.” He said he had told Desire Nobility One not to “use profanity or something we can’t explain, but make it look the way you’d make it look if you had carte blanche.”
Crotty also forwarded an email from Lawrence Kris Parker, the hip-hop artist known as KRS-One, who led a march from the building to Crotona Park last year. “Last time I checked, the First Amendment applies to hip-hop as well,” Parker wrote. “If anything, we should put more signs on more buildings to celebrate our art, our message and our creativity. Why is NYC government fighting this?”
A spokesman for the Department of Buildings said that building owners who want to put artwork on temporary construction installations can get approval from the Department of Cultural Affairs.
But neither the Buildings Department nor City Canvas permit “commercial advertising.” The Buildings Department considers birthplaceofhiphop.com, the web address on the mural, to be advertising because that website sells merchandise — a $250 poster commemorating the birth of hip-hop. (Desire Nobility One said the website was not advertising. She said it promoted the building’s significance to hip-hop.)
While Crotty’s concerns are about the First Amendment, a separate lawsuit asks “whether the city has a constitutional obligation to compensate blameless owners” when it authorizes the owners of adjacent properties to put up sidewalk sheds. The lawsuit, which seeks class action status, says that building owners should be reimbursed when sheds stretch onto their properties.
The lawsuit, filed in filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, describes the four owners who filed it as “blameless neighbors” who have been forced to live with the sidewalk sheds from adjacent buildings. The lawsuit says that a shed from a city-owned school complex stretches across the full width of a townhouse next door that is owned by one of the four.
The spokesman for the Buildings Department said it had not seen the lawsuit.
Weather
Expect a partly sunny day, with the temperature reaching the high 40s, and a chance of showers in Thursday’s early morning hours.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until April 13 (Passover).
The latest New York news
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“They are beating a child”: There had been signs that Kyng Davis, 3, might be in danger. In December, a neighbor texted 911 that she could hear a beating going on. Three months later, on March 9, Kyng’s mother and her boyfriend took him to a Brooklyn hospital, where he was pronounced dead. No charges have been filed.
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Death penalty sought for Mangione: Attorney General Pam Bondi directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, who was charged with murdering a UnitedHealthcare executive in Manhattan last year. Her move is part of a push by the Trump administration to revive the widespread use of capital punishment in federal cases.
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Deaths at Rikers: In the first three months of the year, five people have died at the city’s troubled jail complex or shortly after being released. That is as many detainees as died in all of 2024.
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Stefanik attacks Columbia’s new president: Days into her job as acting president of Columbia University, Claire Shipman is being targeted by Representative Elise Stefanik, a Republican from upstate New York, who questioned Shipman’s commitment to protecting Jewish students on campus.
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Princeton student found not guilty: A judge cleared David Piegaro, 27, of wrongdoing after he was charged with assaulting the head of the university’s security department while recording pro-Palestinian demonstrations last year.
A candidate who says more police officers are not the answer
Zohran Mamdani, who has been rising in the polls in the race for mayor, is not like other candidates who try to allay voters’ worries about crime by promising to hire more police officers.
He wants to set up a new agency, the Department of Community Safety. Its mission would include augmenting mental health teams that respond to 911 calls and expanding the numbers of community-based violence interrupters trained to de-escalate potentially explosive situations.
“The police have a critical role to play,” he told my colleague Emma G. Fitzsimmons. But he added that “right now, we’re relying on them to deal with the failures of our social safety net.” The department he is proposing would follow “evidence-proven approaches that have been successful elsewhere in the country.”
Mamdani also said that he would eliminate the Police Department’s huge overtime budget and do away with a unit known as the Strategic Response Group, which responds to protests.
His criminal justice platform is likely to appeal to supporters on the left. But some voters appear to be pulling away from progressive strategies to reduce crime, and most of his opponents in the race for the Democratic nomination have taken more centrist positions on policing.
METROPOLITAN diary
Jimmie Dale Mood
Dear Diary:
I woke up at 6:30 a.m. in a Jimmie Dale Gilmore mood and was soon playing his song “I’m Gonna Love You” on repeat.
Two hours later, still listening to Jimmie through my earbuds, I walked to the Q with a bounce in my step and a twinkle in my eyes.
My joyful mood must have been unmistakable. A handsome younger man boarded the train and stood beside me, flashing a big smile.
A few minutes into the ride, he asked what I was listening to.
I told him.
“You look happy,” he said. “Are you headed to the gym?”
I wondered why he would ask that. Did I look fit? Or like I needed a workout?
Nope. Foot doctor. Achilles tendinitis.
He offered me sympathy, and suggestions.
I asked where he was going.
“To the gym,” he said. “In the city.”
“Wow, that’s a commitment, crossing the river from Brooklyn just to work out,” I said.
“I live in the city,” he said. “I was visiting my parents.”
And then this: “They’re old, in their 60s, so I try to spend time with them weekly.”
Wait. What did he just say?
I politely informed him that I was 64 and would soon be starting Medicare.
He graciously said he never would have guessed.
I had even more bounce in my step as Jimmie and I exited the train and began to limp off toward the foot doctor.
— Susan Jacobs
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Stefano Montali and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city. More about James Barron
The post At a Hip-Hop Landmark, a Fight Over Sidewalk Shed Art appeared first on New York Times.
