By Pago Habitans*
I was sitting in the garden at St. Luke in the Fields and thinking about soil when Brother Ben appeared on the bench beside me. I’d been considering how relatively little soil is visible in Manhattan, and how we in the Village are lucky to see as much as we do.
Ben must have read my mind. Without even saying hello he held forth with a little song:
I don’t like macadam, Madame,
I much prefer the sod
And fields of flowers to towers,
But we’re stuck with the muck, by God!
“That’s a song they used to sing in taverns when the city began to pave the streets,” Ben explained. “My friend Dougal used to sing it. I’ll tell you about him some time.”
It’s always good to see Brother Ben, an ever-youthful soul who remembers many of the legendary figures in Village history but is equally fascinated by the people who inhabit the neighborhood now. Brother Ben is something of a merry mystic whose spiritual identity defies simple definition. He has been around for quite a long time, as he often reminds people, at least those people who can see him and hear his voice. From what I can tell, there may not be many of us.
“So, you’re thinking of soil,” he observed. “When you stop to consider, there’s a lot more soil around than you think. And I don’t mean just the obvious spots like Abingdon Square, which of course is not a square, and Jefferson Market Library, which of course is not a market, though it is a library.”
Brother Ben continued his discourse. “I’m especially fond of more modest plots, smaller and often oddly shaped, like, for instance, the Jane Street Gardens, that enchanting little woods at the beginning of Eighth Avenue.” I agree that smaller plots provide welcome, often unexpected respite in our overly built-up cityscape.
Not all open spaces are planted, however. Scanning my mental map down Bleecker Street toward the southern end of the Village, I thought of Fr. Demo Square (needless to say, not a square), almost entirely paved over with little observable soil.
“Yes,” Ben acknowledged, “but then think of how nicely the trees provide shade over the benches, and that fountain may more than compensate for the absence of soil.” Brother Ben tends to see the positive qualities of people and places. Then he added, “If you want soil in that particular precinct you have only to cross Bleecker Street and sit in the garden of Churchill Square, which, I am sure you will point out, is not a square.”
Ticking off the list of little parks, we agreed that perhaps the most intrepid small plot in the Village is at the intersection of Seventh Avenue, Waverley Place, and Charles Street. Its official name is McCarthy Square (it’s a triangle), and was created to honor Bernard Joseph McCarthy, a U.S. Marine, Village born and bred, who was the first Village resident reported to have died in World War II. “It’s a tiny scrap of land that was left over when Seventh Avenue was extended below 14th Street and cut through many existing streets and properties,” Ben added.
“Seventh Avenue and the subway cut right through the heart of the West Village,” he continued, “and just as America was getting ready to send its boys off to fight in the Great War, which brings to mind a little local ditty from the time:
“I’m off to dig trenches in France by the Somme
While they’re digging a ditch in my backyard back home.”
Ben was on a roll. “And don’t forget the places dedicated to those who have gone back to the soil,” he said, referring to the small plot on West 11th Street where the tiny early American cemetery of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue still exists. Ben also reminded me that the site of Washington Square was once a potter’s field where the poor and unidentified were buried, before its transformation to a military parade ground in 1826.
Our conversation turned to more domestic examples of soil preservation. Back gardens grace many of the brownstones and row houses on the side streets of the West Village, and window boxes adorn many residential facades. Nearly everywhere along the front curbs are what Ben calls “postage stamp” gardens: those small squares and rectangles (actual squares and rectangles!) of earth at the base of street-side trees and protected by low decorative wrought iron fences. We both expressed amazement that they are mostly undefiled, which has not always been the case.
When I expressed a desire for even more evidence of soil in the Village, Brother Ben pointed out there is probably as much, if not more, accessible soil than at any time since the mid-19th century. “Just look at the great green spaces that now exist in Hudson River Park.”
Before the creation of HRP, Brother Ben pointed out, “there wasn’t any soil visible at all along West Street and the river, at least since the early days of the republic when much of the area around here was farmland. Just look at old pictures of the piers and wharfs along the river. The Village waterfront was a vast plain covered with dirt, and dirt is not soil. In fact, I think we might say dirt is dead soil.”
Ben marvels at the many people—residents, city gardeners, city employees, volunteers, thoughtful pedestrians—who keep the Village planted, watered, weeded, and protected. He watches over them in his unobtrusive and usually unseen unacknowledged way. And he tells me he is not alone. “There is more good will and providential spirit abroad in the streets of the Village than we can see or imagine,” he often reminds me, and I believe him.
Ben and I decided we had taken up space on the bench long enough. A number of people —a young couple with a pram, an older woman with a bag of illicit bird seed, and a tired-looking UPS worker among them—were circling the walkway, in hopes that we might move along. Of course, from their point of view, it was me, not we, who needed to get up and go.
*Village Resident otherwise known as T. P. Miller
