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New York Times - August 1, 2001

    A New Spirit Rises Near Columbia
    By BARBARA STEWART

    Morningside Park in Upper Manhattan was long a battleground between Harlem residents and the students and faculty at Columbia University. In 1968, after the university started construction on a new gym in the park, protests on campus resulted in the arrests of 700 students and a lasting suspicion of Columbia in the neighborhood.

    In the years that followed the protests, there were several well-publicized murders and numerous muggings in Morningside Park. Columbia students were — and often still are — warned in no uncertain terms to keep out of the park. Morningside Heights residents refused to set foot in it.

    The park was covered in litter. The cliffs were jungles. Homeless people camped in the sightseeing bays.

    "Anything horrible, we had it in the park," said Doug Robinson, president of Friends of Morningside Park, an advocacy group. "You'd come here at dusk, and at the top of the stairs there'd be a flicking of Bics everywhere. It looked like a rock concert — 50 or 60 crack addicts lighting pipes all at once."


    Improvements to Morningside Park reflect changes in community relations as well. Above, an egret roams the edge of the pond.


    But the park is emerging from its nightmare. Welfare workers and a gardener hired by the City Department of Parks and Recreation in 1999 are clearing overgrowth. The ball fields are booked, and children are in the playgrounds. Sunbathers have been appearing. Corporate and neighborhood volunteers are turning out to clean and weed. Columbia students routinely settle under trees to read.

    The physical improvements are obvious. But the improvements are signs of bigger changes: the people surrounding the park are getting along better.

    To the east of Morningside Park are Harlem residences; to the west are Columbia, the Episcopal Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine and St. Luke's- Roosevelt Hospital Center. Ideally, Morningside Park would be common ground, the place for everybody. Instead, until recently, most people avoided it.

    "For years," said City Councilman Bill Perkins, who represents Harlem, "that sense of we-them created layers of discord that kept people from getting together, from working together. But now, some sort of spiritual thing is taking place. There's a grass-roots movement to take back the park. As the real estate values increase, the number of people helping in the park increases, too."