Going Green in Harlem

The limestone bricks of the four-story townhouse at 459 West 140th Street have faded to a muted brown and gray. Its windows have been boarded or cemented shut with cinder blocks, the front entrance is shuttered with a metal gate, and its locks are a rusty green. The weeds springing from the cracked steps are the only signs of life. To pedestrians, the abandoned house reeks of decay, but change is coming.

The owners of the townhouse, the Harlem-based environmental group West Harlem Environmental Action, or WE ACT, have ambitious plans to make the 19th century house into a 21st century center for environmentalism. Eco-friendly buildings have sprung up throughout the city, but often at addresses far south of Harlem. WE ACT’s new headquarters, to be called the Environmental Justice Center of New York, will bring Harlem its first green non-profit community center when it opens in 2009, and only the second green building in West Harlem (the other is a residential complex). But instead of another monument to the Toyota Prius school of environmentalism — where buying green products and going carbon neutral has become the latest in lifestyle choice — the converted townhouse aspires to reflect the unique concerns of environmental activism in West Harlem, where warding off climate change takes a back seat to the more immediate realities of pollution and health.

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