NEW YORK — Several bronze plaques commemorating figures from New York City’s rich history were removed from the buildings they hung on this summer, and are expected to be sold for scrap, part of a disturbing trend that includes: theft of a statue of Jackie Robinson from a park in Kansas.
Among the victims is a plaque honoring writer Anaïs Nin and a plaque at the site where the short-lived rock venue Fillmore East played host to legendary artists such as Jimi Hendrix and The Who.
A third plaque honoring Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, was removed from the building where she headed the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, but “oddly enough, it was not stolen.” Instead, the plaque was left on the sidewalk, said Andrew Berman, executive director of Village Preservation, which installed the Nin, Fillmore East and Blackwell plaques with permission from the building owners.
Berman’s group, also known as the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, has installed two plaques a year for the past 12 years, at a cost of $1,250 plus staff time, he said.
Unlike the monuments of presidents And conquerors The monument preservation group’s plaques, which are attracting attention elsewhere in the city, are intended to honor pioneers who might otherwise be forgotten.
“A disproportionate number of our plaques are women, people of color, LGBTQ people, and countercultural sites,” Berman said. “So it’s extra important to try to make this often invisible history visible, and that’s why it’s extra disheartening that these plaques are being stolen.”
Nin’s stolen plaque on the East 13th Street building where the famed diarist and novelist ran a printing business says her work there “helped connect her to a larger publisher and a wider audience, ultimately inspiring generations of writers and thinkers.”
Blackwell’s plaque stated that the hospital she opened in 1857 was the first hospital to be run and staffed exclusively by women.
The Fillmore East plaque marked the concert hall that promoter Bill Graham opened in 1968, a venue beloved by performers and audiences “for its intimacy, acoustics and psychedelic light shows.”
The thefts in New York are not unique. Rising metal prices have led thieves to target historical markers in other cities, including Los Angeles, where plaques at the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument and Chinatown Central Plaza were stolen last year.
The statue of Robinson, the baseball Hall of Famer who integrated the Major Leagues, was stolen from a Wichita park in January and replaced this week.
Berman’s group also hopes to replace the plaques and is investigating whether materials that are less popular for resale can be used or whether a more secure way can be found to attach the markers.
“We haven’t quite found the solution yet,” he said.