New York City AIDS Memorial

More than 100,000 New Yorkers died of AIDS, while caregivers and activists mobilized to care for the ill, fight discrimination, lobby for medical research, and alter the drug approval process, changing the epidemic’s course. The continuing mission is to inspire and empower activists, health professionals, and people living with HIV to eradicate the disease. The site stands on a triangular parcel formerly part of Saint Vincent’s Hospital, where after the hospital closed in 2010 a public park was created through community review, built by the Rudin Management Company as part of a residential conversion, and given to the City of New York in 2017. Its location lies at a crossroads in early AIDS history in New York City: the first documented cases, reported in 1981, disproportionately affected the nearby gay male communities of the West Village and Chelsea; in 1984 Saint Vincent’s opened the city’s first AIDS ward and the nation’s second as patients filled its beds and hallways; nearby, ACT-UP and other advocacy and support groups first organized at the LGBT Community Center on 13th Street; the first headquarters of Gay Men’s Health Crisis were within blocks; and Doctor Joseph Sonnabend, who pioneered community-based AIDS drug trials, had his former office nearby, while his co-op board’s attempt to evict him led to the nation’s first AIDS anti-discrimination case in 1983. Many consider this location the symbolic epicenter of the epidemic and of the mobilization against it. A white triangular steel sculpture, central fountain, and benches designed by studio ai architects were selected through an international competition, and visual artist Jenny Holzer chose and arranged passages from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (1855) for engraving in the granite pavement. The space offers contemplation, reflection, remembrance for the men, women, and children lost to AIDS, and a gathering place that underscores the work still required to defeat the disease. It was dedicated on World AIDS Day, December 1, 2016.

New York, New York · United States