The East Village is easily New York’s most colorful neighborhood. There’s no contest really, have you seen the lamp posts in this part of town?

The East Village Mosaic Trail

This “Mosaic Trail” started as a guerilla art project by a struggling Vietnam vet. Jim Power is now a New York legend. He’s the man behind all the vibrant mosaics in Astor Place, along St. Marks Place, and in other streets in the village.

There’s a story behind every piece, every shard that comes together to make the image. I look at them and think about the bowls that broke for them. It’s an incredible collection, hard to miss if you ever visit the East Village- at least during daylight hours!

The Mosaic Trail, as it is called, is such a New York story. It brings you back to a time when artists could afford to live in the East Village. When you could spend an hour messing around with a lamp post and not get arrested. Hard to imagine now!

They say creating these works of art helped Jim Power cope with his PTSD from Vietnam. How many people have they inspired since he started in 1988?

There’s a lot of mayoral drama here too- Giuliani removed much of the art and tried to stop it, two decades later, Bloomberg gave Jim Power the permission to keep making them. Only in New York, right?

Makes you want to get out there and create your own art, don’t they? Beautify a tiny corner of the city and hope it sticks. This is what people did before the internet.

Untapped Cities has a great virtual collection of all of the work on the Mosaic Trail, along with more info about the origins and Jim Power’s story: Photographing Every One of Jim Power’s Mosaics on St. Mark’s Place