Claire McCarthy, spokesperson for Cooper Union, said the school filed a police complaint after the wall on a building the school owns on E. Sixth St. that formerly displayed the “Forever Tall” 9/11 twin towers mural was vandalized by two paint bombs.
The mural was only intended to stay up a year, but community residents became attached to it. However, Cooper and its tenant, Dolphins restaurant, stood to share in revenue from a billboard there.
Residents held a candlelight vigil in front of the mural on Sept. 11, asking Cooper Union to save it, but two days later the artwork was painted over. In mid-September, two splats of paint, one blue, one white, appeared high on the now plain, tan wall.
McCarthy said it’s appropriate to file the complaint since the acts constituted vandalism and property damage.
Who threw the paint remains a mystery.
Anna Sawaryn, a leader of the Coalition to Save the East Village and a chief critic of Cooper Union’s development plans in the area, said she noticed the paint after leaving Community Board 3’s Sept. 21 Housing Committee meeting. But McCarthy said the splats were up before then.
“I didn’t do it,” said Sawaryn.
Keith Crandell, who, in a recent Villager talking point column, took Cooper to task for destroying the beloved 9/11 mural, similarly said, “I didn’t do it.”
