NYC AIDS Memorial

The NYC AIDS Memorial opened on 1 December 2016 — World AIDS Day — on the small triangular plot across from where St Vincent's Catholic Medical Center stood until 2010. St Vincent's ran the East Coast's first and largest AIDS ward from 1984 onwards and cared for more people with AIDS than any hospital on the eastern seaboard during the epidemic's darkest years. The memorial itself is an 18-foot-tall white steel canopy of triangular panels — a form the architects, Studio ai, arrived at through triangular geometry as a nod to the pink triangle. Underfoot, a granite pavement is engraved with excerpts from Walt Whitman's *Song of Myself*, chosen by Jenny Holzer. Beneath the canopy, three benches offer shade and a place to sit. The memorial is small — you can walk it in five minutes — but is designed to be re-visited. Yearly ceremonies happen on World AIDS Day (1 December) and Pride Sunday. On any regular afternoon it functions as a neighbourhood public square, which was exactly the intent: not a solemn plaza but a lived-in bench-and-tree corner in Greenwich Village. A short walk from Christopher Street and the Stonewall complex, this is one of the two places in Manhattan where the AIDS crisis is publicly memorialised in permanent form — the other is the community-organised Names Project quilt panels, which are itinerant. Free, open 24/7, no ticketing required.