East Village: How Empty Lots Became Gardens and Public Space
Volunteers keep the squat era's photographs, painted timelines and paperwork in two rooms on Avenue C, then hand you a map to the gardens it explains.
🌱 What the Archive Holds
Two rooms make up the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, or MoRUS, and both sit inside C-Squat, the building they document. The storefront and the basement gallery hold a painted community gardens timeline, photographs of buildings before and after residents repaired them, salvaged objects, and labels written by volunteers.
Start with the gardens timeline, then the panels on the squats and activist spaces that held their ground. At the desk you can buy a garden map for five dollars, with visiting notes for each garden, and the museum's weekend tour walks through several of them.
Then go see one. La Plaza Cultural sits on the corner of East 9th Street and Avenue C, about a two minute walk from the storefront. Tompkins Square Park is another five minutes west. Each garden is run by its own volunteers, and some only open when members are on site, so treat the outdoor half as a bonus rather than a promise.
Entry runs on a five dollar suggested donation. Doors open Wednesday to Sunday, noon to 5 PM on the Visit page. The museum's Tour Pricing page gives Thursday to Sunday, 11 AM to 5 PM, for the same building, and neither page shows when it was last updated, so call (646) 340-8341 or recheck the Visit page before you go. Weekend walking tours leave Saturday and Sunday at 3 PM, cost twenty five dollars per person, and need no reservation.
Official info at morusnyc.org/visit/ and morusnyc.org/f-a-q/ (checked 11/03).
