Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop announced major upgrades to Newark Avenue’s pedestrian mall beginning this fall including a new brick surface, a performance stage, and new plantings.
Hudson County is a place defined by spectacular views. Nothing impedes our apprehension of Midtown Manhattan—there it is, right across the river, monumental and breathtaking. Seen from the top of the Palisade, our own tall buildings and tidy downtown neighborhoods are pretty impressive, too.
Two decades ago, no artist would have depicted Jersey City like this. Hudson County was resistant to glamorization. Instead, artists who engaged with the town— photographers Ed Fausty and Shandor Hassan, for instance—favored a stark realist approach so keenly and meticulously observed that it attained the alien quality of dystopic science fiction.
Green Villain, a creative platform that uses public art to drive community engagement throughout Jersey City, has partnered with Rabbi and artist Yitzchok Moully, a New Jersey-based artist, and with Rabbi Shmully Levitin of Chabad Young Professionals of Hoboken & Jersey City to produce an interactive public art project located outside the Buy Rite Liquors store at 575 Manilla Ave, Jersey City, NJ.
When advocates for Jersey City’s Harsimus Cove/Sixth Street Embankment look up at the old rail structure, they see the prospect for an East of the Hudson High Line – albeit with nuanced ecological features – but after more than a decade of court battles and an estimated $1 million in legal fees expended by the city, is that vision doomed to be pie in the sky?
