There are many different neighborhoods with rich street art traditions in New York City. You might go to Queens, to Long Island City and Astoria, which I’ve written about before here, here, and here. There’s more in the Bronx – as well as Staten Island – and I’ll explore those more in the future in this blog. In Manhattan, you can find murals in Washington Heights (the Audubon Mural Project, which I wrote about here), Harlem (here‘s just part of what’s offered), East Harlem (more on that here), Chelsea, Little Italy, Chinatown, Alphabet City, and the Lower East Side (including the First Street Green, which I wrote about here). And finally, there’s even more offered in Brooklyn – Dumbo (see here), Williamsburg and Bushwick (more on those coming soon), and others.
For this post, I thought I would focus on one particular street art project in Brooklyn, known as JMZ Walls. JMZ Walls is named after the J, M, and Z train lines which run along Broadway in this part of Brooklyn. In fact, you can find all of these murals within just a block or two of Broadway. I’ve also included a few murals from the Dodsworth Street Mural Project, an earlier mural project whose boundaries seem to overlap with JMZ Walls. In fact, it’s really hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Here is a description of JMZ Walls by its founders, taken from its website:
JMZ Walls is a group of Bushwick residents who love the diversity and identity of Bushwick. We are committed to providing a unique collaborative experience for artists and our community. We endeavor to seek out available walls for local and global artists to create pieces that will be viewed by the greater Bushwick community. Our goal is to not only beautify our neighborhood, but to provide imaginative works of art the residents of Bushwick would not otherwise have access to. We believe that the streets have the potential to be a gallery to recount the history and progression of New York and the larger global community.
There are so many murals it is impossible to feature them all in a single blog post, so I will concentrate my attention here on my favorites, as well as others that show the diversity of the art work in the neighborhood. Artists’ names – and Instagram accounts, when available – are located below each photo.
Want to explore the JMZ Walls and Dodsworth Street Murals for yourself? The easiest way to access them is from the J, M, and Z trains. All of the murals I’ve posted photos of here are located off of Broadway between the Kosciuszko Street station and Marcy Street station. You can also access them from the stations in between, including the Myrtle Avenue, Flushing Avenue, and Lorimer Street stations.
Finding NYC 