Harry Helmsley is Going to Destroy This Park!

A couple of rare photographs showing the plywood put up around the North Park on Memorial Day weekend, 1980, prior to demolition by Harry Helmsley. Or at least the attempted demolition by Harry Helmsley.

Of course, the plywood attracted immediate graffiti from the locals, in both good taste and exquisitely bad taste.

Apparently, some of the graffiti hit too close to home, and the blue paint covered up some of the previous work. Someone has written We love trees, but Helmsley is sleaze, so let's bring him to his knees. Somebody else wrote YEAH! 

Our favorite cartoon ‒ the rear end of an ass.

The second photo has some good lines ‒ These parks are the unreal estate of H. Helmslee ‒ but the primary graffiti is key:

Rather convoluted at best, the joke lumbers along until finally coming to its end. There was an addendum in another hand reading This is too low (bottom right). Apparently not everyone liked this approach, but hey, that's Tudor City for you.

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These pictures come courtesy of Fabrice Frere, who photographed the scene as a teenager. Thanks, Fabrice.