372-374 East 8th Street | Block : 377 | Lot #18

Building Date : n/a
Original Use : Community Garden

Original Owner : NYC Parks and Recreation
Original Architect : n/a

Description & Building Alterations

This site is the location of the Green Oasis Community & Gilbert’s Sculpture Garden. The gardens were created by local residents Normand Valle and Reynaldo Arenas in the vacant lots of former tenements in the early 1980s. The name Gilbert’s Sculpture Garden was derived from the superintendent of the neighboring building John Gilbert Ingram, Sr. (1932-1999) who created the sculptures found throughout the garden. For more on the garden’s origins see its website HERE.

The previous building on the site was a six-story, 28-family New Law tenement erected in 1903. It was designed by Bernstein & Bernstein for John R. Simpson of 60 Liberty Street. It was demolished in 1978.

Block : 377 / Lot : 018 / Building Date : n/a / Original Owner : NYC Parks and Recreation / Original Use : Community Garden / Original Architect : n/a

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What is the Building Blocks Project

What does a building mean to someone who lives there? A person who lives on the block? In the neighborhood? In the city? This site presents a wealth of historic information gained from GVSHP’s architectural research survey about the buildings located in the East Village.

The site explores the area generally considered today as the East Village: from a northern border of 14th Street to a southern border of Houston Street, Avenue D in the east to 4th Avenue/the Bowery to the west. You can explore the information about the blocks and buildings featured here in two ways.

Pick a block. Maybe it’s yours, or perhaps it is just your favorite place to shop, grab a bite, or just people watch. Then explore the buildings that make up that block. Or take one of the many guided tours on the site, curated by a collection of organizations and experts from the neighborhood. See how they experience the neighborhood. Then tell us what the neighborhood means to you. The site’s comments section allows you to open a dialogue with others who feel just as passionately as you do about the East Village.