In today's New York Times opinion piece, Needles, Threads and New York History, Jean Appleton opposes the efforts of the local business improvement district to change the Garment District's name. Ms. Appleton reviews the district's vital and colorful history concluding:
"Doing so, however, would eviscerate the pulsating history of the place. It would pretend that the district was only ever about the final product, about the retail shops along Madison Avenue. Today “fashion” is the red carpet, Condé Nast, it is Schiaparelli and Prada at the Metropolitan Museum. The phrase “garment district,” by contrast, evolved from the blood and muscle of labor’s bodies.
Renaming the garment district would do more than offend our city’s history. It would dissociate this historic entity from its unique qualities and significance in the life of New York City. It would erase a vital part of New York’s past."
Likewise, I think that the nondescriptive and nondescript moniker "Hudson Square" eviscerates the pulsing history of OLV country, aka The Printing District. The parish is closed, the church can be demolished and the footprints of the longshoremen and print shop workers who came to worship on Broome Street can be wiped away. I am sorry that there are people who view this as improvement rather than loss.
2 comments:
The struggles of labor in this country are being obliterated in the hopes that industry can get a good worker at a working poor wage. This is THE business (Republican) strategy. It is shameful how and that it is being done. But, the one with the gold makes the rules. Us overpaid lackeys just better shut-up and make room for the 2%ers.
Anonymous,
What do you think can be done about it? Who and where are my people? Like Our Lady of Vilnius parishioners they are scattered few and far between on my landscape. Their habitat has been destroyed. They no longer live in the neighborhood.
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