When David Reed looks out of his Morrisania apartment window, he sees a natural beauty ravaged by an urban beast. Five stories below, a rock formation from the Ice Age twists and curves for a full block down Longfellow Avenue.
Twenty years ago, neighborhood children scrambled over the falls and ridges of the rock while parents barbecued on its 20-foot-high plateau.
Today, the outcropping, which sits in a 40,000-square-foot lot, is choked with weeds, littered by garbage and plagued by illegal dumping. And rats are the only ones scrambling on the rocks.
"In 1980, they built senior citizen homes on Bryant Avenue, and the contractors left a lot of debris," Reed recalled. "Then came the illegal dumping. After a while, the sanitation men stopped cleaning."
That may soon change. The North Longfellow United Block Association, with help from several organizations, is hoping to turn the abandoned lot into a rock garden.
With the lot swarming with vermin and the nearest park, Crotona, an eight-block hike away, the association decided 15 years ago to lease a small city-owned lot down the street for its community garden. But in 1992, the group was told by the Mid-Bronx Development Housing Corp. that new houses would replace the garden. To soften the blow, the corporation pledged $10,000 toward turning the rat-infested lot into a rock garden.
But the rock garden plans didn't take shape until recently when an environmental agency, the Urban Resources Partnership, pledged $100,000 -- one-fifth of its budget for the city.
"We sensed the passion from the community for this project," said Lisa Maller, the partnership's director. "We also realized that there was an environmental need and that this group did not have the technical expertise or finances to get it started."
Block association members are ambitious, hoping to carve stairs into the outcropping, install a playground and build an amphitheater for fund-raising events.
"We want to generate some type of income," said Reed, the block association president. "No more welfare, no more handouts. We want to own that lot."
But they face a number of obstacles.
First there is the rock itself, a hard Fordham gneiss that can only be blasted by dynamite. In fact, housing has never been developed on the lot is because nearby buildings would need extra support for their foundations, which would make construction cost prohibitive, Reed said.
Another problem is safety. While residents say that no children have ever been hurt climbing the rock, the possibility of accidents still causes concern.
John Dudley, district manager of Community Board 3 and avid supporter of the propopsed garden, said, "Those rocks are dangerous. Even though children haven't been hurt, that doesn't mean they won't get hurt on that rock."
But the block association and the Mid-Bronx group are determined to see the project through.
"You have to be creative," said Ralph Porter, the group's executive director. "This rock garden can be done. After all, the Egyptians did these things centuries ago."