Lenin on the Lower East Side
“Lenin walks around the world / Frontiers cannot bar him / Neither barracks nor barricades impede / Nor does barbed wire scar him…”
— Langston Hughes, 1946
There rises a red star over the Lower East Side. That once-vibrant immigrant village, the golden door of legend, was home to Germans, Greeks, Eastern Europeans and Jews; it was the land of rolling tenements, a hotbed of anarchism and communism, a bohemian backwater of the beat generation. That was then and this is now: a gentrified hotspot, home to Dimes Square, filled with gorgeous people spouting post-ironic dogshit. There, floating above Norfolk Street — Lenin lives!
A towering statue of Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin — described variously as bronze or copper — stands on a rooftop in Manhattan. He has been there for more than 30 years: first atop Red Square, a 13-story apartment building on Houston, and then atop 178 Norfolk, a mere 300 feet away. He can be seen from afar, facing southwest with his hand raised high in lofty pose, as though caught in triumphant address. He is indefatigable, unflagging, as resilient as his enduring message. In any weather, at any time of day, there he stands… but why?
An old Red Square postcard showing Lenin waving towards the still-standing Twin Towers.
Red Square, erected as the Berlin Wall fell, was christened thus for remarkably unrevolutionary reasons: the building was red, and the building was squarish. Michael Rosen, a self-described “radical sociologist turned real estate developer,” also had the neighbourhood’s red history in mind when he chose out the name, but it was a reference without much reverence. A single-bedroom in the luxury residential rental went for $975 a month, which comes out to around $2,500 today — hardly in step with the Lower East Side’s storied socialist past. The imposing 130-apartment complex was one of the area's earliest flagship developments, a nail in the coffin of a Lower East Side that was already bristling under shifting demographics.
The year prior, anarchists squatting in Tompkins Square Park got into a huge and bloody melee with — who else? — a classically violent NYPD. Tompkins Square — then “the only park in the city without a curfew” — was the nexus of local resistance in the late-’80s, the bloody frontlines of the battle against gentrification’s quickening creep. The then-recent revitalisation of Christodora House, a 16-story settlement building that had served as a derelict community centre, contributed to those rising tensions. In a pitched battle that played out as much in the pages of The New York Times as the streets of the East Village, protestors gathered against a proposed 1am park curfew, against the destruction of dangerous local squats, and in defence of the large community of homeless who called the park home. It was a short battle: the NYPD destroyed the park’s tent city in ‘89, most of the local squatters were evicted from Alphabet City, and the park no longer stays open all night.
The vacant Christodora House had once hosted, among other things, the local chapter of the Black Panther Party, but the conversion to condominiums in the mid-’80s invited so-called “yuppie scum” into the neighbourhood. Michael Rosen, Red Square co-owner, was one such yuppie. From on high — in his Christodora House penthouse — Rosen wielded what critics alleged was an undue amount of local power, courting controversy in the late 2000s over his involvement in local rezoning efforts. As a self-styled liberal — as Maria Luisa Tucker puts it in her terrific 2008 Village Voice profile, “a respected community activist, a former professor of radical sociology, the father of seven adopted children, and a friend to local radicals like Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping” — Rosen toed the line between landlord and firebrand, though on balance, ‘real estate mogul’ is an apt descriptor.
Rosen is variously described as a maverick and a knave, but he appears like any other liberal-minded real estate man, powered by the duelling forces of an obvious love for the East Village and a sharp eye for financial opportunity. He helped save St. Brigid’s and organized local activities for kids, he “rides his bicycle to community meetings to fight what he sees as insensitive development,” but virtue is in the eye of the beholder. Rosen was a member of the East Village Community Coalition, which funded “an expensive survey of the area that kicked off the rezoning process,” and then a member of a special rezoning task force, which put forward a specific proposal to the city council. This 2008 proposal was accepted, then challenged, then upheld, and then justified by Rosen himself. Critics, such as housing activist Philip Van Aver, accused Rosen of “creating a situation where he can benefit privately.”
Red Square appears to be one of Rosen’s earliest developments, but he takes pride in the achievement, with many an online biography mentioning the building by name. He did, during his rezoning crusade, admit to some regrets over the project. “I believe that one learns from one's experiences—that's the lovely part of being alive,” he told the Village Voice in 2008. “I don't believe the zoning should have allowed Red Square to be built the way that it is.” Rue his previous plans though he did, it’s worth considering if this was more about the literal height of Red Square or the impact it had on the local neighbourhood that featured so prominently in the building’s original brochure:
“A seamstress and a presser, shy as villagers falling in love over the accompaniment of whirring sewing machines and sweet tea...[fade to...] The lint of sweat shops swept out by raucous Spanish accents...[fade to...] Long haired poets silk-screening posters for the revolution...Today it's an after hours club. Or is the apartment where the incredible Dutch model with one name lives with Mr. Wallstreet?"
Five years after Red Square opened, Lenin — no friend to anarchists or ‘Mr. Wallstreet’ — appeared on the roof. This 18-foot Lenin was built by sculptor Yuri Gerasimov at the behest of the Soviet government, and was finished in 1982, during the final stretch of Brezhnev’s premiership. A quick succession of leaders followed, culminating in Gorbachev, under whose custody the Soviet Union collapsed. It was during this turmoil, in 1989, that the previously-unexhibited Lenin was discovered resting in the backyard of a dacha outside Moscow by an associate of Red Square co-owner Michael Shaoul. It was a strange irony: the Red Square that would host this Lenin was in Manhattan, at the very heart of the capitalist project.
“I wanted to do something creative, fun, an homage to the history of the Lower East Side, which had been a hotbed of political thought,” said Michael Rosen in 2016. Red Square was being sold to The Dermot Company, a “notorious management company” with a slew of complaints for “slumlord-like behavior.” Sure enough, once Dermot Realty Management took control, the name Red Square was retired, and staff salaries were cut by 30 percent. “The doormen were making around $16/hour, now cut to $11,” wrote one resident. “They were given ONE DAY to accept or leave. Not being union employees, they had little choice.” The bronze/copper Lenin was many things — authentic, tongue-in-cheek, perhaps even a taunt — but mere moments after he took his leave, workers started getting stiffed.
He didn’t go far, spending a single night in a storage lot before ending up laying face-up atop 178 Norfolk, which sits almost directly across from Red Square. 178 Norfolk is also owned by Rosen, who has collected a considerable portfolio of residential buildings in the Lower East Side. Property portfolios aren’t especially Marxist, but Rosen’s three-decade commitment to Lenin, whatever the intent, is admirable all the same.
A self-portrait of Yuri Gerasimov, the sculptor of the LES Lenin, 1987
He persists to this day, facing off towards Wall Street, hand raised high. An ironic comment, a sardonic monument, a strangely earnest salute? It could be any and, somehow, it seems like it could be all. It’s hard not to see cynicism in the elevation of Lenin by a gentrifying real estate developer, no matter how progressive his liberal politics or radical his sociology. A statue of Lenin calls to mind the history of the Lower East Side, but in voraciously acquiring and developing the very same neighbourhood, Rosen has done something to erase that history.
It’s something, though. If you’re here, you probably know me, or you saw a statue of Vladimir Lenin in the Lower East Side and rode the algorithm this far. The neighbourhood has changed, the rents have skyrocketed, capitalism is in crisis and the world is ours to win. It would be too easy to leave it here, to view Lenin’s visage as just a downtown oddity. What was intended as a nod should be taken as a sign: dig deeper into the radical stories that run through the streets, tap into the hard-earned wins of the labor movement, pick up a copy of State and Revolution.
If you’re walking through New York and Lenin catches your eye, lend him your ear, too.