With Street-Sweeping on Hold, One Block Takes Matters (Brooms) Into Their Own Hands

By Renée Roden

With sycamore leaves catching the golden hour sunlight and its distinctive “shepherd’s crook” wrought-iron street lamps, West 69th Street lives up to its title as “leafiest block in Manhattan.” Debby Brown, who has lived on the block since 1969, observed that the plentiful foliage causes another problem: leaves in the gutters.

Debby Brown along with neighbor Margery Cohen took part in the West 69th Street Block Association’s “Sweep-a-long” on Tuesday night.

West 69th St. Block Association President, Eileen Vasquez, decided to do a community clean up after the city announced that the street cleaning would be suspended until June 28th.

At fifty-one years old, their block association is the second-oldest in New York City, and Vasquez said the community prides itself on being a “very involved block.” “We like to say that we’re the most beautiful block on the Upper West Side,” she added.

But the interruption of city cleaning services had dulled the block’s beauty. “It was looking very dingy, gutters are blocked up, water’s sitting” Vasquez noted with frustration. Vasquez observed the standing water caused by blocked gutters had started to smell.

Brown stated that because 69th is a “pass-through block” to Central Park, pedestrians with dogs often leave the block messier than they found it. Brown said passers-through “often don’t clean up after their dogs, they’ll throw cans and trash in the tree pits.”

And so Vasquez sent an email out on Sunday to the block announcing the sweep-a-long.

In her email, Vasquez wrote: “After 3 months of quarantine, and only one visit from a city street cleaner, the street could use a little attention.”

As the day’s humidity began evaporating, Brown and Cohen swept up leaves and styrofoam alongside their neighbors. Initially, Vasquez had received ten responses to her initial call to action. But as the sweeping began, several more neighbors trickled out of apartments with brooms to help clean up. “They just jumped on the bandwagon,” she smiled.

This is not the first time the block has rallied together in the face of Covid. In cooperation with surrounding blocks, the block association started an online resource and information hub in March for the surrounding blocks, so that community members could easily get information from one centralized website.

In March, they started a volunteer group and sent out flyers to each building offering grocery deliveries and other supports. This year, they had their planters professionally done to help with social distancing and to keep morale up. “Very important for the morale,” according to Vasquez.

Vasquez noted that the block has impressive longevity, “There’s a lot of people who have lived here for decades and decades.”

Like many Manhattanites well-polished coifs, the block has gotten a little shaggy during Covid, but overall “the block has actually held up really well,” said Vasquez.

The neighbors talking together and sweeping up leaves in teams clearly showed why.