On a cool April evening, Patti Smith stood on a makeshift stage in Nolita’s Elizabeth Street Garden and eased into the 2004 deep cut “Peaceable Kingdom.” She serenaded a crowd that was there to protest the city’s plan to build much-needed senior housing on the site. Then, the refrain “build it back again” gave way to a couple verses and the chorus of Smith’s jangly 1988 activist tune “People Have the Power,” transposed into a contemplative key.
An ageless avatar for downtown New York, Smith has publicly championed numerous political causes over the years, from civil rights to responding to climate change. That she was now standing against low-income seniors priced out of the neighborhood speaks to the ideological incoherence of the pro-garden coalition—a group of wealthy transplants and aggrieved aesthetes, NIMBY bloggers and edgelord podcasters, who together pressured the Adams administration to rescind its eviction orders. In June, the administration capitulated to their demand. Nolita’s picturesque little oasis was spared.
The Elizabeth Street Garden saga was al…