A Memorial to Those Slain in Crown Heights--Is it Time to Say Goodbye?

Over on the Brooklynian, there is an interesting thread about a mural on the corner of Nostrand Avenue and Park Place in Crown Heights. The mural, painted on the side of a bodega, documents the lives and deaths of about 50 people from the neighborhood from the 1990s to about 2006. Most were young men, most died before the age of 25 though some were decades older and some, sadly, were much younger. The writer believes that most were the victims of the violence and turf wars that accompanied the drug trade. Such murals are common throughout Bed-Stuy, Clinton Hill and Crown Heights, though most celebrate the life and mourn the death of a single person or a few people. The mural is right alongside the entrance to a daycare. Though there is no indication that the mural is slated to be painted over or that the building or business is changing hands, the commenters are debating whether such a mural, documenting a far different, more violent time in the neighborhood’s history, serves a purpose anymore. Should it remain as a warning of past ills, a marker of the neighborhood’s history? Or, has its time come and gone? Would the neighborhood be better off if the mural were painted over and such past violence forgotten. What do you think? Do these murals have a place and serve a purpose in neighborhoods that are nearly a decade removed from their most crime-ridden eras? Is it disrespectful or arrogant to want to wipe out such history and the names of those who once lived and died here?

Should the Shrine at Nostrand and Park Place R.I.P.? [Brooklynian]