Back in the Eighty’s I lived in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. At the time, it was what you called a ‘bad neighborhood’ . The advantage was a reasonably priced, large second floor apartment with a captivating view out my window of burned-out abandoned tenements, drug dealing and the bizarre street-life below. Situated in the middle of this wasteland was a wonderful surprise called Adam Purple’s garden.
Adam Purple's Garden
Adam Purple was an ageless man with long gray hair and long wispy beard. He got his name from the color of the clothes he wore. The garden was a circular labyrinth of raise planting beds. Bricks confiscated from the dilapidated tenements were used to weave walks through the garden. He created his own soil by crushing brick and mixing it with horse manure he gathered from Central Park and carried in a box on the back of his bicycle. People would discover the garden by following the purple footsteps Adam made on the sidewalks throughout the downtown.
Unfortunately, the city decided to confiscate the land and despite the protestations of the many people who loved the garden, it was plowed over to make room for public housing. Today the neighborhood has been gentrified and is overtaken by up-scale restaurants, art galleries, music clubs, and coffee shops. I don’t know what happened to Adam Purple.