Something’s missing on St Nicholas Avenue between 170th and 185th street in Washington Heights: Graffiti.
It wasn’t always that way, though, according to Bruce Pianski.
“Basically every grate had graffiti. So what we do is paint over each grate. Top to bottom, corner to corner.”
Graffiti Slide Show from Jen Howard on Vimeo.
Pianski is the president of City Solve, a graffiti-removal company that works with local politicians and business improvement districts to eradicate graffiti. This stretch of St Nicholas Avenue is part of a $20,000 pilot project to clean up the streets of Northern Manhattan, which Pianski says are some of the most graffiti-riddled in the greater New York area. It’s an extension of the broken windows theory, he explains: leaving a broken window, or graffiti, on a city street encourages loitering, littering and petty crime. So far, the project is proving to be successful, and Pianski hopes to expand to expand it.
“Unfortunately, this is just a small section of the neighborhood. But Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
Click below to see before and after photos of City Solve’s efforts.
Amikka Smith also contributed to this report.
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