Carolyn Ratcliffe collection on La Plaza Cultural
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Abstract
La Plaza Cultural de Armando Perez is located on the Lower East Side of the Manhattan borough of New York City. Founded in 1976 on the site of an abandoned city lot, the space has become an outdoor community garden, space for play and social gathering, and a performance venue. The collection includes photographs, ephemera and working papers from the files of Carolyn Ratcliffe, an officer in the 1990s to early 2000s of the non-profit organization formed to rebuild the La Plaza Cultural site, acquire grants, and develop programming there. Photographs are the core of the collection and include images of performances; community celebrations of Halloween, springtime, and other occasions; sculpture and other artwork; people gardening, building, and doing other work in the space, as well as enjoying leisure activities; flowers and other plants in the garden; and other related subject matter. The collection also includes some material to about 2010 from Ratcliffe's involvement with other Lower East Side community gardens and cultural organizations, including the Art Loisaida Foundation for which she is Artistic Director.
Biographical/Historical Note
La Plaza Cultural de Armando Perez (La Plaza Cultural) is located at the corner of East 9th Street and Avenue C on the Lower East Side of the Manhattan borough of New York City. Occupying a large corner lot, La Plaza Cultural is an outdoor community garden, space for play and social gathering, and a performance venue. It began in 1976 when an artist in the area, Gordon La Matta Clark, led a neighborhood effort to clean up an abandoned lot that had been the site of since-demolished buildings. Into the 1980s, the site developed into a park, with garden and theatre space. By the late 1980s, though, real estate interests sought to rebuild on the site. This led to a series of court battles, ending eventually in 2003 with a settlement that ensured La Plaza Cultural's survival.
Through the 1990s and into the early 2000s, as the court fights went on, the programs at La Plaza Cultural did also. A non-profit, the 600 B/C East Ninth Street Block Association, was formed and incorporated to rebuild the park and manage programs, such as the performance of "Demeter's Daughter" in 1997 and the annual Halloween celebration. Among the active members of this non-profit was Carolyn Ratcliffe, a resident of the La Plaza Cultural neighborhood. Ratcliffe was elected Chairperson of the association in 1990 and held various official positions with the organization over the next thirteen years until the 2003 legal victory. Over that period, she acquired various grants in support of La Plaza Cultural's programming, organized many of the programs, wrote publicity materials in support of the organization and site, and was an overall active participant in building La Plaza Cultural's role in the community while defending it from development.
Along with her work for La Plaza, Ratcliffe was, and still is, engaged with various other cultural organizations and initiatives, including as a founding member of the artist cooperative Artistas de Loisaida and as the Artistic Director of the non-profit Art Loisaida Foundation.
Arrangement Note
The collection is organized in two series, by format:
Series I. Paper-based Files
Series II. Digital Files
Scope and Contents
The collection includes photographs, ephemera and working papers from the files of Carolyn Ratcliffe relating principally to the history of La Plaza Cultural de Armando Perez. The bulk of the collection dates from the mid 1990s to about 2003, with much of this material being photographs. The photographs include images of performances; community celebrations of Halloween, springtime, and other occasions; sculpture and other artwork; people gardening, building, and doing other work in the space, as well as enjoying leisure activities; flowers and other plants in the garden; and other related subject matter. Most of the photographs are color print snapshots; other formats include slides, negatives, and digital files. Some of the photographs and other images were gathered into albums.
The collection also includes at least some of Ratcliffe's working files in both paper and digital form. These primarily include documents related to grant funding proposals, reports to project funders, financial summaries, contact lists, and other administrative matters. Among the programs and grants represented in these files are the La Plaza Cultural Environmental Living Lab Program, Community Assets grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and Neighborhood Open Space Management grants from The Trust for Public Land. The files include letters received from schoolchildren at PS 188 who participated in a gardening curriculum in 2003.
The collection also includes small posters and other publicity materials related to events at La Plaza. Also, the collection holds several digital formats, including zip drives, floppy disks, and CDs with photographs, brochures, hard drive back-ups, contact lists, and other matter. Many of these files require specialized software to access. In addition to La Plaza, some of these digital files concern Ratcliffe's involvement with Artistas de Loisaida, Art Loisaida Foundation, and other community cultural matters.
Subjects
Access Restrictions
The paper-based materials in this collection are stored offsite. For more information on making arrangements to consult them and/or the digital files, please visit www.nyhistory.org/library/visit.
Use Restrictions
Taking images of documents from the library collections for reference purposes by using hand-held cameras and in accordance with the library's photography guidelines is encouraged. As an alternative, patrons may request up to 20 images per day from staff.
Application to use images from this collection for publication should be made in writing to: Department of Rights and Reproductions, The New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024-5194, rightsandrepro@nyhistory.org. Phone: (212) 873-3400 ext. 282.
Copyrights and other proprietary rights may subsist in individuals and entities other than the New-York Historical Society, in which case the patron is responsible for securing permission from those parties. For fuller information about rights and reproductions from N-YHS visit: https://www.nyhistory.org/about/rights-reproductions
Preferred Citation Note
This collection should be cited as the Carolyn Ratcliffe collection on La Plaza Cultural, MS 3051, New-York Historical Society.
Credit line: Photographs in the collection that were taken by Carolyn Ratcliffe should be credited to her when used for public purposes.
Location of Materials
Immediate Source of Acquisition Note
Gift of Carolyn Ratcliffe, June 2016.
About this Guide
Processing Information Note
The paper-based portion of the collection (Series I) was processed by archivist Larry Weimer in March 2018, and a finding aid for that material was published at the time. In early 2022, the digital files were processed by archivist Margo Padilla, with description added to the finding aid by Weimer; see the Processing Note at Series II for further detail.