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By Leah Reddy

In 1705, Queen Anne of England granted Trinity Church a large swath of land on the west side of Manhattan. She’d never laid eyes on the hotly-contested continent she casually divvied up.

That land, now managed by Trinity Real Estate and known as Hudson Square, has been home to farms, tenements, docks, churches, schools, taverns, stables, printing houses, and, presently, digital media firms. Revenue from the land has supported mission and service work in the city and around the world.

This summer a piece of the Queen’s gift will feature something that the Queen could not have imagined: an 11’ x 80’ set of letter-shaped planting boxes, filled with South American flora, that spell out AMERICA’S—possessive, not plural.

The horticultural statement is part of the Avenue of the Americas exhibit at LentSpace, a sculpture park at the intersection of Canal, Grand, Varick, and Avenue of the Americas.

LentSpace is the result of a partnership between Trinity Real Estate and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC). Realizing that the land would not be redeveloped for some time, Trinity Real Estate loaned the site to the LMCC, which created the temporary park.

The exhibit was inspired by the eponymous Avenue of the Americas, which physically begins at LentSpace. Commonly known as Sixth Avenue, the street was renamed by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in 1945 to honor pan-American ideals and principles. The name change was part of a larger beautification project—the Sixth Avenue elevated train had been torn down, and the boulevard was in need of revitalization. Medallions representing the countries of North, South, and Central America were hung from lampposts, and plazas honoring pan-American heroes were planned, though only a few, such as Duarte Square, were ever constructed.

Avenue of the Americas is an attempt to finish, and comment on, what LaGuardia started.

“What are pan-American ideals? That was the question,” Adam Kleinman, LentSpace’s curator, explained.

Four artists were commissioned to create site-specific work for the park.

“I didn't want to impose any of my readings [on the art]. But what came out of everyone’s approach is an interest in language, in communication,” Kleinman said.

The AMERICA’S sculpture is the exhibit’s largest. It was created by Columbian artist Carlos Motta and horticulturist David Sanin Paz.

“Within the plantings are plants from all over North America and tropical plants from South America,” Kleinman mentioned. “These are in many ways species from other countries, so obviously as nature does what nature does, seeds and nettles, weeds, will fly in, and will also start populating and cross pollinating that garden. We plan to keep up with weeding, but in the fall we're going to let it go a little wild so all that diversity will mix and blend.”

Argentinean artist Judi Werthein created the exhibit’s smallest piece, a faux-historic plaque made of inscribed jewelry she purchased at Manhattan pawn shops.

The plaque features text from Cronopios and Famas, a novel by Julio Cortazar. “Cortazar wrote one semi-surrealist cultural history of Argentineans and the book begins with a series of bizarre instructions like ‘How to wind a watch’ and ‘How to cry,’” Kleinman said. “Judi took “How to cry” and that’s what the text on the plaque is. However, it's in Spanish. We worked with a speech pathologist on how it would sound phonetically to an English speaker, so even they could pronounce it--like a ritual.”

The other sculptures include 140 street signs written in a secret code, and a large, distressed, 3D version of the Televisa logo leaning on a giant armchair (intrigued yet?).

Visitors will be able to take home a souvenir of the exhibit, a newspaper called Late Editions in which print-media artists offer their take on pan-Americanism.

Leah Reddy is multimedia producer for Trinity TV & New Media.