Quality of Life

Our quality of life initiatives are designed to maintain our streetscape and improve the resiliency of our neighborhood, through our long standing environmental and beautification programs.

Clean Streets

For more than a decade, our Clean Streets initiative has been improving the beauty and quality of life for residents of Carnegie Hill. Our Clean Streets manager walks the neighborhood daily looking for damage, graffiti, potholes and other nuisances that need repair.

CHN regularly sees to the repair of all municipal property – from lamp posts to benches – and we work with building managers and property owners to facilitate repairs to private property. Examples include 3 new trees planted on 95th Street between Fifth and Madison avenues, repainted lamp posts and mailboxes and new tree guards and sidewalks installed along the south side of 90th Street between Fifth and Madison avenues.

If you see an issue that needs resolving, please contact us. Also, you should contact 311. From there, you will be directed to the appropriate agency and will receive a code number for the relevant issue. Please call us with that number and we will work on a resolution.

Robisson Santos, is CHN's 2022-2023 Clean Streets Intern

Graffiti Removal

Our Clean Streets team of interns removes graffiti, errant stickers, and unauthorized postings from Carnegie Hill public spaces to combat urban vandalism. Our special blend of street-level maintenance, tree care, and other beautification efforts provides on-the-job training and the extra clean-up and care in Carnegie Hill that the city does not provide.

Graffiti removal is an effective weapon we use to fight for our neighborhood’s beauty and calm and detract from our historic landmarks and pedestrian thoroughfares. We welcome other organizations to try our methods and publish our protocols online to benefit from this important work.

View participating buildings here.

Street Tree Care

Pruning and Maintenance:

The Street Tree Care Committee Co-Chairs are CHN bard member Virginia Pitman and Julia Bradford and Suzanne Goldstein. Carnegie Hill residents see them and their volunteer committee on Saturday mornings, twice in the spring and twice in the fall, pruning street trees and cultivating tree beds. These volunteers also report empty tree beds and dead trees to the Parks Department and request new trees as needed. In the past two years, through various sources, close to 50 new trees have been planted in Carnegie Hill.

CHN partners with Trees New York to offer a course in tree care and pruning so you can become a licensed pruner. You can join the Street Tree Care Committee without a pruning license - just the desire to help street trees live long, healthy lives. For more information click on the Quick Link below.

2022 Green Initiative:

Through a partnership with District 4 Council Member Keith Powers and Greener NYC, Hunter College Campus Schools (HCCS) now has 26 revitalized tree beds on the footprint surrounding Hunter High School.

The block's 26 tree beds, home to many mature street trees, and a few young trees, were enlarged for optimal hydration, and to promote root growth. Each bed was fitted with a custom HDPE tree guard designed and fabricated in New York City, by City Tree Guards, a local small business dedicated to improving the environment by producing an affordable product line using renewable materials.

Hunter High School is a publicly funded pre k - 12th grade school, serving approximately 1,500 students on site since 1977. Formerly home to Squadron A of the Eighth Regiment Armory, the building's Madison Avenue façade was landmarked in 1966.

Quick Links:

Park Avenue Malls

For many years, the malls along Park Avenue were unkempt, beds of sod that residents frequently used as an ill-advised place to run and relieve their dogs. In 1980, ten years after its founding, CHN initiated improvement plans for the avenue, transforming every median between 96th and 86th streets into lush green lawns, bookended by flowerbeds boasting a seasonal flowering display at each pedestrian crossing.

For over 40 years, CHN has managed and underwritten the care and maintenance of these malls with participation from the co-ops and condos facing the avenue, as well as a few other generous donors in the vicinity that joined CHN's "Conservancy" style efforts in the late 2000s.

In addition to the seasonal plantings and flowering trees, the CHN constantly waters, weeds, and conditions the lawns and beds, manages trash pick up and repair of all guard railing and signage from the north side of 86th Street, to the south side of 97th Street where a little garden caps the mall before Metro-North takes over the midline of Park Avenue.

A recent, significant donation made in 2017, from a Park Avenue resident, replaced every single Taxus hedge on the mall; much needed and appreciated upgrade.

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