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Jessica Fletcher

Jessica Fletcher is a doctoral candidate in art history at the CUNY Graduate Center. She works on twentieth century architecture history, focusing particularly on how left-wing urban activists adapted and constructed ordinary buildings to serve the needs of working-class women and children in cities across the United States.

A brick wall with the words “Playground” in graffiti script.

Cut-Rate Eden

Passing by the Jacob Riis Houses of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the summer of 1966, an observer would have seen not the empty concrete plaza and fenced off patches of green lawn common to public housing projects, but a vibrant adventure playground populated with gaggles of ...