Part of the Berlin Wall Comes Down, Again

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/20/nyregion/part-of-the-berlin-wall-comes-down-again.html

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The Berlin Wall has come down again.

For nearly a quarter-century, surprising even those who think they know everything about New York, five segments of the concrete border that once divided Berlin have served as the centerpiece of a public plaza on East 53rd Street, behind the office tower at 520 Madison Avenue.

Not now. They have vanished.

About 10 days ago, Lee Gelber, a professional guide who does business as Here Is New York Tours, received a panicked email from a colleague specializing in groups of Dutch and German tourists. “She said, ‘Lee, the Berlin Wall isn’t there anymore,’ ” Mr. Gelber said. He went to see for himself. Sure enough, it was gone.

The Municipal Art Society was baffled, he said. The New York Landmarks Conservancy knew nothing of the disappearance. In utter desperation, he reached out to a reporter.

It seems that the news is good: The concrete slabs have been taken away for restoration and repair, which they needed after years of standing near a waterfall, and they will be back. But this could not be officially confirmed on Friday with Tishman Speyer, which owns 520 Madison Avenue and describes the wall on its website as a permanent amenity.

Having stood 28 years as a potent symbol of the Cold War — a concrete embodiment of the Iron Curtain — the wall was largely demolished in 1989 and 1990, after the East German government allowed its citizens to travel to the West. Jerry I. Speyer, the chairman of Tishman Speyer, bought five 12-foot-tall segments from the government.

The slabs could not be missed by passers-by. They were arranged West Berlin-side out, covered with angry graffiti, including an enormously disturbing human face.

“The slabs powerfully convey the sense of desolation and alienation,” Jerold S. Kayden wrote in the book, “Privately Owned Public Space: The New York Experience,” which has been excerpted on a website called Apops.

“The work is known as ‘The Berlin Wall,’ created by artists Thierry Noir and Kiddy Citny,” he wrote, “and falls squarely within a venerable public art tradition of jolting viewers out of their routine ways of thinking.”

Mr. Gelber, who is 76 and lives in Astoria, Queens, said the wall had a special resonance for him. He was undergoing basic training at Fort Dix, N.J., when the wall was erected in 1961, seemingly presaging the possibility of World War III.

“They had equipment packed in ocean containers so that, theoretically, we could go at the proverbial moment’s notice,” he recalled. “I really thought I’d be looking down the muzzle of a Russian tank.”

For him, there is no romance to the wall, where many East Germans met their deaths trying to escape to the West. After visitors have contemplated the artwork on the visible side, he invites them to inspect the eastern side, which is out of view.

“I tell them, ‘Put your hand back there and you’re going to feel holes about 9 millimeters in diameter,’ ” he said. “That’s a gotcha.”