The Freedom Tunnel — A Haven For Urban Art
By Taylor Nemetz
When you think of street art, the Upper West Side probably isn’t the first neighborhood that comes to mind. But the Freedom Tunnel, located underneath Riverside Park on the Upper West Side, has had an illustrious past and an even cooler present.
It began as the West Side Line, an underground freight train route built by Robert Moses in the 1930s to accommodate the expansion of Riverside Park for its Upper West Side residents. Regular operations ended for the West Side Line in the 1980s due to the increasingly prevalent phenomenon of trucking, which soon replaced the freight train as the most efficient method to transport goods.
However, the demise of the West Side Line catalyzed the birth of a new phase in the life of the tunnel — the era of shantytowns. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, the tunnel provided shelter and community to as many as one hundred homeless individuals from the New York area. The shantytowns of the homeless completely dominated the tunnel until it was reopened for use by Amtrak in 1991. But the trains did not ward off intruders for long.
In fact, just yesterday I became one of those intruders. During the time of the shantytowns (and ever since), the Freedom Tunnel became prime real estate not only for the homeless, but also for street artists looking to make their marks somewhere relatively untouched by law enforcement and hidden from the the disapproving public eye.
Getting inside the tunnel was a bit of a treacherous experience in itself, but the adventure became truly exhilarating when I found myself surrounded by the vast and versatile murals shouting color and creativity in the otherwise dark abyss. The tunnel is fascinating; despite the seeming limitations of such an obscure canvas as walls in an underpass, it operates much like a formal museum or gallery. The artists use the space to their advantage any way possible, seeking out places of abrupt natural light filtering down from the grates above to illuminate their most impressive works and using the turns of the tunnel walls to experiment with spatial relationships of shape and perspective on an unconventional surface.
One such artist, Chris “Freedom” Pape, brilliantly utilized the space of the eponymous Freedom Tunnel during the 1980s and 1990s to make powerful statements regarding culturally significant issues of the time that are still very much relevant today. Although not all of his work has survived, one can still find remnants of the famous “Coca-Cola Mural,” a multifaceted piece that presents itself as both a pastiche of the sensational experience of American advertising and as a tribute to the displaced homeless population that inhabited the tunnel before their shantytowns were destroyed with Amtrak’s private ownership of the space.
One can also admire Pape’s beautiful reappropriation of the classical statue known as “Venus de Milo” in which he brings this priceless three-dimensional object to life on a flat surface using techniques of intense shading with black and silver paint, as well as his references to the celebrated hands from Michelangelo’s Renaissance work in the Sistine Chapel. These pieces are not only strikingly beautiful, but also significant in that Pape’s incorporation of such famous pieces into this underground gallery seemed to simultaneously heighten the practice of graffiti as an art form and as an extremely unique means of expression.
Although Pape is perhaps the most well-known artist to have worked in the tunnel, new graffiti enthusiasts are gracing the walls with intensely moving pieces each and every day. The Freedom Tunnel is, and always will be, a mecca for dedicated and immensely talented street artists — a sort of rite of passage for those truly involved in the graffiti game.
There is definitely value in art projects that make use of abandoned and off-limits parts of urban settings, but unfortunately, the difficulty of accessing these places prevents the projects from getting the public appreciation and critical attention they deserve. That being said, the ingenuity and aesthetic allure of the art combined with the captivating history of the Freedom Tunnel makes it a must-see for any street art aficionado or urban explorer. Remember, though, that the trip is not for the faint of heart, but if you think you can handle dodging semi-frequent trains, a few dead animals, and quite a hike, then I can assure you that the adventure will be entirely worth your while.
Images by the author
