East River Water Table

Permanent Public Artwork
East River Esplanade, New York City

Commissioned by: NYC Economic Development Corporation
Location: East Harlem, NY
Status: Under construction
Year: 2023-2026
Team: Jerome Haferd, Gabriel Moyer-Perez, and Pedro Cruz Cruz

Water Table celebrates the water’s edge as a place of gathering, celebration, and repair. This permanent artwork will image the archaeology and everyday water stories of the El Barrio / East Harlem, while re-surfacing an archaeological trace of the original Harlem Creek which once flowed into the East River here and now lies buried.

The Water Table is a design language for the landscape and a community engagement concept and public infrastructure. The piece is designed to inscribe and activate a crescent-shaped micro-plaza that will embrace the entire esplanade for the purposes of gathering and everyday ritual at the water’s edge.

The Water Table’s steel and precast concrete design weaves our collective histories into a gathering space and collective statement that resonates not only our human, indigenous relationship to the Water, but also celebrates the diasporas and peoples that gather and have gathered at this specific site and continue to do so today. The Water Table also is an act of joy, abundance, and community, and will serve as a playful and vibrant representation of the revitalization of this Waterfront, displaying “etched” contributions by numerous cultural and community actors from East Harlem.

Jerome Haferd was shortlisted and then selected for the project out of 50 invited artists, by a selection committee of Manhattan and East Harlem arts leaders, NYCEDC, and NYCParks officials.

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