Did you know that in Paley Park, 3 East 54th Street flanked by vertical waterfalls is an approximately 12-foot-high and overall 20-foot-long series of five remnants of the graffiti-covered Berlin Wall. The striking images on display were painted between 1984 and 1985 by Thierry Noir, an artist who lived in an apartment along the Waldemarstrasse in Berlin Kruezberg, adjacent to a section of the Berlin Wall.
In 1990, when pieces of the wall were sold at auction in Europe, Jerry Speyer, president of the American real estate company Tishman Speyer, purchased the remnants now displayed in the small “pocket park”. Speyer celebrated the demise of communism in Germany by situating his portion of the Berlin Wall in the home of American capitalism.
