El Puente's New Bridge

I often go to visit Main Streets outside of New Jersey. On Monday, October 20th, I had a wonderful excursion to the "City of Brooklyn," as Borough President Marty Markowitz called it. I went to see the ribbon-cutting for a new school building developed by El Puente, a community human rights organization serving Northern Brooklyn and beyond. El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice has taken over Transfiguration Grammar School, a Catholic school that had educated generations of people from the Williamsburg neighborhood. Luis Garden Acosta, who founded El Puente in 1982, welcomed a long list of people who had helped in the struggle for the new home for the school. Among them was Congresswoman Nydia Velasquez who shared that she was heading back to Washington to work on the economy. "The country is depressed and you know why. This is a dose of optimism when I really needed it." Political and community leaders rejoiced in that Transfiguration School had been given new life. NYC Councilwoman Diana Reyna, who grew up in the neighborhood, told the youth in the audience, "You are surrounded on all sides by people who want to protect and nourish you. And that is what this icon of a building is: a place to nurture children. If these walls could talk, what stories they would tell of our community." The shining faces of the Academy's students were enough to light up anybody's day. Leaving the event, I reflected back on a speech I heard Acosta give at Body and Soul, the 2008 International Urban Parks Conference in Pittsburgh. At the end of his remarks, he asked the audience to rise and join him in chanting, "The people united will never be defeated!" That ribbon-cutting was certainly a case in point.

Wall Street, Main Street, Happy 5769!

The juxtaposition of "Wall Street" and "Main Street" occurs in many articles about the deep financial crisis in the US. While Wall Street has obvious connotations, I'm not sure what they mean when they say "Main Street."

What I've learned in New Jersey is that Main Street is a huge mixed bag. Take, for example, Cedar Lane in Teaneck, NJ, where I had lunch yesterday. Cedar Lane was empty, deserted. It looked like Christmas Day, it was so empty. And it sense it was: yesterday was Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, one of the holiest days in the Jewish calendar. Many of the stores on Cedar Lane are operated by Jews and serve the large, and actively religious, Jewish community that lives in the area. I had lunch with a friend at an Indian restaurant, one of a number of ethnic restaurants that was welcoming diners. Main Street is like that: it takes on the character of the people who live nearby. At the same time, Main Street has services that reach a much larger group. I love to visit Teaneck's farmers' market which is held in one of the Cedar Lane parking lots and attracts a diverse crowd, including people who travel to distance to get great fresh vegetables, bread and other treats.

Main Street is a street. People walk up and down, they accomplish tasks, they greet neighbors, they look at the urban streetscape, they dream about possibilities. Each of these functions will be affected in different ways by the collapse of Wall Street. Main Street, at its best, is not simply the local mirror of Wall Street, but rather it's antidote. My lunch on Cedar Lane buoyed my spirits. I enjoyed the time spent with my friend. I was heartened to think it is 5769 in the Jewish calendar: people have been counting for a long time, and they've made it through worse than this.

"Happy New Year!" from Main Street.

University Course on "MainStreetNJ"

Fall is in the air, and it's time to get back to Main Street! I had a great summer, visiting some wonderful places. I got to work with some of the greatest names in French city design this summer. I spent 3 weeks working on "Le Grand Paris" -- the Great Paris -- a project started by French President Nicholas Sarkozy to envision the future of Paris. For my part, I toured the cities around Paris and took hundreds of photos for a report I submitted to Michel Cantal-Dupart. Since getting back to the US, I've been to Los Angeles, Ludlow, VT, and Chicago. This weekend I'm off to Pittsburgh for the a conference on city parks. But Main Street is calling and I'm ready to get back to my appointed rounds, visiting 105 New Jersey Main Streets.

What makes visiting Main Street really great is going with friends and finding some great dining in local bistros. So I'm organizing a course through the University of Orange. I'll post the cities and the meet-up spots for all the cities I'm visiting. People interested in joining me can meet me there. We'll look around, take photos, talk to the locals and have a great lunch. The University of Orange, a free people's university, requires that you learn something in order to get your degree in freedom. So take my course -- it's going to be great!

Historic Tour of Main Street Orange

Karen Wells, the unofficial historian of Orange, will be leading a tour of the historic buildings on Main Street, starting at 8 AM on Saturday, June 28th.  The tour begins on the steps of the library, a building designed by McKim, Mead and White (photo).  Other historic stops: the Metcalfe Building, the First Presbyterian Church, the Masonic Temple and City Hall.  Orange has an excellent collection of turn-of-the-century civic architect.   It is one of the assets the city hopes to use to strengthen its economic base and civic life.  Karen's tour is sure to help: her love of Orange is infectious. Everything under the sun links back to Orange and she has a fact at her fingertips to prove it.  Her facts are funny and impressive: whatever you know about Orange, you'll know more after a half hour with Karen!

Roses on Main Street

David Jenkins, a friend of mine who is living with AIDS, told me about losing an aunt. "I took her flowers every time I visited her -- she got flowers in her lifetime," he said proudly. "Mindy, take time to stop and smell the flowers. Everywhere I go, I smell the roses." I promised I would. I had an unexpected opportunity to smell the roses on the way to a benefit for the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. I got off the Garden State Parkway on my way to Branch Brook Park, in Newark, and I saw a big sign for Oakeside, the Bloomfield Cultural Center. I thought that would be an interesting place to visit -- as I turned the corner, I found out I was already there and I stopped to look at the garden. A heavenly smell hit me when I got out of my car. I walked all around the grounds of the magnificent Victorian house, spotting clumps of roses here and there. It was in the back of the house that I found what I was searching for -- a small formal rose garden with a luxurious scent. I stopped to enjoy it before getting back on the road. If you're passing by Bloomfield, stop for a moment to smell the roses. David will be so glad!

Main Street, Orange, back in the day

I had the opportunity to visit with Karen Wells, Orange's historian.  She has a collection of maps from 1914.  Their generous scale, beauty and detail offered us a wealth of information.  We could see the great houses that lined Main Street giving way to commercial buildings, as the estates moved to Seven Oaks, Orange's built-in suburb, which was laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted according to Karen.  It was fascinating to ponder what was there and what wasn't.  Her house had been built, but my childhood home on Olcott Street had not.  Oakwood Avenue School was there, but Friendship House was not.  Nor had the Parrow Street housing projects been built -- they didn't go up until 1951.  We searched for the major churches.  What we call "Orange" was once the center of a much larger area, and the great churches were centralized in the core.  The churches stayed when the residential areas split off to make their own cities.  Karen pointed out that a number of these historic houses of worship is equipped with a magnificent organ.  We wondered what it would take to create an organ festival on Main Street?

A River Runs Through It

Main Street in Hackensack is pointedly urban.  I hadn't thought much about its river connection until I had the opportunity to get a bird's eye from a friend's apartment.  From the eighth floor of a Main Street apartment building with a panoramic view, I could see the river's curves and grassy banks define a terrain just east of center city.  The contrasting parts of the city -- waterway and street -- had a pleasing harmony in the midst of a jumble of stuff: the NY skyline, steam from a factory of some kind, and the odd patchwork of the Hackensack's urbanism.  My friend said they had taken the apartment for the joy of the view.  "One night there was a full moon reflecting off the river -- it was so beautiful, but we hadn't seen that before."