Boarded Up,
2020

2020 was an unusually difficult year for New York City — a pandemic that closed businesses and kept neighbors apart, followed that summer by widespread protests connected to the Black Lives Matter movement. During that stretch, plywood went up over hundreds of storefronts across Manhattan to help protect businesses. Artists and passersby turned many of those blank boards into something more: a way to express what they were feeling in the moment, whether that was fear, grief, humor, or hope.

Most of these boards were never meant to last — once storefronts reopened, they were treated as ordinary debris, tossed out. We've spent time tracking down and saving as many as we could, because they deserved better than a dumpster. If you'd like to give one a home, contact us in the link below — a way of keeping a small piece of this city's history around.