Consequences of fencing in Canada’s famous park – New York Times International Weekly – International

At first glance, the metal grate adorning the public restroom at a playground in Riverside Park may seem innocuous: four posts, each decorated with a long-tailed iron monkey.

But the monkeys were black. Their wrists were handcuffed to the net. The park, called Ten Mile River Playground, is located in Harlem, a majority black neighborhood – a fact that seemed far from a coincidence to many.

Shiloh Frederick, a content creator who focuses on New York history, learned about the apes while reading “The Power Broker,” a book by Robert A. Caro’s 1974 biography of Robert Moses, the parks commissioner who transformed the city through public works projects. Moses oversaw the expansion of Riverside Park in the 1930s.

Dove trellises in other sections of Riverside Park feature more neutral motifs, such as “rolling waves,” Caro wrote. But in the playground in Harlem there were monkeys.

In September, Frederick, 28, filmed an expedition to the park for Instagram and TikTok. He told his followers that he was looking for something that he hoped he would not find. He assumed that the monkeys had been absent for a long time.

But they were still there.

Although widely considered a visionary, Moses was also a racist — “unashamedly and unapologetically,” as Caro said in his reflection on writing “The Power Broker.” Manhattan’s vibrant San Juan Hill neighborhood, home to a large black and Latino population, was demolished to make way for Lincoln Center. It also built bridges that were too low to allow public trucks to pass, thus preventing low-income people from accessing some of its parks.

Frederick was afraid that people would respond to his video by saying that Moses was just a man of his time and there was no need to do anything.

“Just because something is old, it doesn’t deserve to be on display forever, especially if the intent behind it is negative,” he said.

But the reaction to her video, which garnered nearly 45,000 views on TikTok, far exceeded her expectations. Frederick returned to the stadium after more than a month to confirm what some of his followers had told him: that the monkeys had finally disappeared.

Conversations about the “intent and symbolism” of the monkeys had been “ongoing long before” the video surfaced, Kelsey Jean-Baptiste, a parks department spokeswoman, said in a statement.

City Councilman Sean Abreu said a $7.4 million renovation of the stadium is underway.

“There is not enough evidence that this is something special that we should protect,” he said. “So we decided to eliminate them.”

By: Claire Fahey
New York times