Mary Patten's Douglass Street Mural

Murals are the people's blackboard.
-Pablo Neruda

So begins On the Wall: Four Decades of Community Murals in New York City, by Janet Braun-Reinitz and Jane Weissman.


Last week we were privileged to attend a fascinating illustrated talk by Ms. Weissman about the history of community murals in New York. We have written previously about the Park Slope murals of Mary Patten, member of the circa-1970s Madame Binh Graphics Collective, and brought home a copy of On the Wall so that we could learn more about community murals in general, and Park Slope's murals in particular.

The authors define community murals as

collaborations among artists, neighborhood groups, and mural organizations... A singular art form, these large-scale and site-specific works reflect the social, cultural, and political climate of their times and the neighborhoods in which they are located. Community murals beautify, educate, protest, celebrate, affirm, organize, and motivate residents to action.

Park Slope has had a somewhat complicated history with community murals.

Our first community mural was apparently Mary Patten's "Douglass Street Mural" of 1976:

Mary Patten, Douglass Street Mural, 1976

Concerning the Douglass Street Mural, the authors of On the Wall write:

[Patten] lead a team of twenty teens and adults through a five-month process to develop the themes and imagery... Seeking community input and consensus... the team posted bilingual flyers, canvassed local residents, and organized community meetings. The Douglass Street Mural takes great advantage of the architecture of two adjacent building walls that suggest the facing pages of an open book. In her bold design, Patten powerfully transforms images that in a lesser hand would be overused cliches. At the mural's dedication, two of the young artists directed viewer attention to the right wall, with its angry bolt of lightening and imperialist eagle clasping a puppetlike figure in its talons. Under them are images representing redlining, racism, and the firebombing that had recently destroyed the homes of several Black families just blocks away. The artists then pointed to the shining rainbow on the left wall, showing "what is possible when people work and fight together to [create] what we need: a community school that provides quality education; people sharing skills and tools; dancing together; making music and painting a mural...

In the late 1980s, new housing obscured the mural, and its loss elicited widespread expressions of sadness in the neighborhood.

By comparing building details in the mural photograph with present-day photographs in our comprehensive photo survey of Park Slope, we have identified the mural's location as the west wall of 389 Douglass Street, the older building on the left in the photo below. The newer housing that obscured the mural is visible to the left of #389:

389-391-393 Douglass Street - unprotected

On the Wall's authors cite Patten's Douglass Street Mural as a highly successful example of a community mural, one that was welcomed and valued by the community. Unfortunately, Patten's next effort, the First Street Mural of 1977, which we will examine in a subsequent post, did not work out nearly so well.

Mary Patten, Park Slope Muralist

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to present an update from the much more recent past, circa-1970s Park Slope.

Throughout the '70s, '80s, and even into the present day, a movement to create wall murals has existed on the margins of gentrified Brooklyn. This movement has recently been chronicled in a new book, On the Wall: Four Decades of Community Murals in New York City, from the University Press of Mississippi, reviewed in the March, 2009 Brooklyn Rail.

What caught our attention was a reference to a mural entitled "Douglass Street Mural", by Mary Patten:



In seeming contradiction to the mural's title, the review attributes the mural to "First Street" in Park Slope. Perhaps there was more than one mural by Mary Patten? Does anyone remember these murals?

Unfortunately the mural, wherever it was, seems not to have been entirely welcomed by "community members" who feared it would "bring down property values". The controversy ended when the mural was "obliterated by paint bombs".

"'On The Wall' describes artist Mary Patten’s 1977 First Street Mural in Park Slope, a work created with teens from Project Reach Youth. The theme, opposition to the era’s pervasive redlining and arson for profit, rankled community members who saw the depiction as overly combative and likely to 'bring down property values.' The searing conflict ended when the mural was obliterated by paint bombs."

This community intervention is interesting enough on its own terms.

But what really compelled our interest was the name of the artist, Mary Patten.

Fast forward 30 years, to last fall's "Signs of Change" exhibition at Exit Art in Manhattan, a show of graphic art in support of social movements over the past 40 years, curated by Dara Greenwald and Josh McPhee.

A "zine" was distributed at the exhibit, entitled "Revolution as an Eternal Dream: The Exemplary Failure of the Madame Binh Graphics Collective", which chronicled the activities of an above-ground graphic arts wing loosely affiliated with the Weather Underground in 1970s Brooklyn. It provided a fascinating insight into the radical-left marginal communities in and around Park Slope, circa 1970s. (A correspondent informs us that the Madame Binh Graphics Collective was located on Taaffe Place.) Actually, the communities only seem "marginal" by today's presentist standards. As the 'zine makes clear, in the charged atmosphere of the 1970s, revolution was "in the air" and it seemed as if a new world was coming into being any moment, which must have made for heady times indeed.

And the name of the author of this "zine"?:

Mary Patten.

Thus we recover another fragment of Park Slope's lost or suppressed history of the radical fringe communities, circa 1970s.

A Complete 5th Avenue Blockfront

In the April 29, 1886 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, we read that George Brown had completed "five brown stone front houses" at the southwest corner of 5th Avenue and Douglass Street. The article noted that each "house" (actually a mixed use building) contained a store and three flats or apartments above:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 29, 1886, p. 1 ("New Buildings")

Checking our comprehensive Park Slope photo archive, we find that the original buildings are still standing. Each of them is three "bays" or windows wide.

5th Avenue & Douglass Street, SW corner - unprotected

The cornice detailing, or what remains of it, matches on two of the adjoining buildings:



An earlier Eagle notice for the same row attributes the buildings to W[illiam]. H. Brown, who may have been in the same firm with George Brown. William Brown was also active in this area of the Slope around the same time:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 21, 1885, p. 1 ("More Houses")

At the same time George Brown erected his 5th Avenue row, he also constructed a building in Douglass Street, just to the rear. Its completion was noted by the Eagle in the same article that noted the completion of the 5th Avenue row:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 29, 1886, p.1 ("New Buildings")

It was not unusual for builders to control lots on both sides of a corner, as here. The building is actually only trimmed, not faced, with brownstone:

410 Douglass Street - unprotected

But the cornice detailing matches that of the 5th Avenue row:


And it is also the only three-story, three-family building on the south side of Douglass Street, which facilitates the identification.

Meanwhile, the four buildings at the northwest corner of 5th Avenue and Degraw Street were erected by Dan Buckley, as noted in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of March 19, 1887:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 19, 1887, p.1 ("Buildings")

Unlike George Brown's row to the north, which is faced with brownstone, the Buckley row is brick with brownstone trim. Again, the quoins on the corner building nicely punctuate the row:

5th Avenue & Degraw Street, NW corner - unprotected

Oddly, the corner building in this block, at 17.5' wide, is much narrower than the other three, which are each 27' in width. The former held only one family per upper floor ("single flats"), while the wider buildings held two ("double flats").