Watch Patti Smith perform at rally to save Elizabeth Street Garden

Elizabeth Street Garden has been embroiled in a fight to stay open as the city, which owns the land, tries to move ahead with plans to build affordable housing for seniors in the space. Patti Smith has been a longtime supporter of the park, and on Wednesday (4/2) she performed there at a rally to save it. Watch video of her performance of “Peaceable Kingdom” below.

As Rolling Stone points out, in a letter to Mayor Eric Adams in August of 2024 lobbying on the garden’s behalf, Patti wrote, “The Elizabeth Street Garden is an entirely unique public sanctuary, where art, nature, literature and activism peacefully abide. I have been privileged to read poetry and sing in the Garden’s serene yet celebratory gatherings, attended by people of all ages, friends and neighbors, tourists with their children. The Garden is not only an oasis of greenspace within our city, but truly stands as a work of art. The effort to save it is reflective of a mass effort to preserve the nature and ever evolving character of New York City.”

The development planned for the space, Haven Green, says it’s a “unique senior housing development expected to consist of 123-unit deeply affordable apartments,” and says it “will be affordable to extremely low-, very low-, and low-income seniors with thirty-seven apartments for seniors who have been homeless.” Plans are also for it to include “nearly 16,000 square feet of publicly-accessible garden space designed and programmed through a community engagement process, community engagement opportunities, flexible community activity space, as well as onsite and community services provided by Riseboro Community Partnership and Habitat NYC and Westchester.”

As NY1 points out, the state comptroller says more than 61% of seniors in NYC were “rent burdened” in 2023, and nearly a quarter of seniors were living in poverty that year.

Advocates for the garden say that there are other locations housing could be built on instead. “Affordable housing and greenspaces are both essential assets and should not be pinned against each other,” Patti says.