Dorchester Bridge Gets Murals This Weekend

A mural for the walls on the part of Dorchester Road that goes over the subway, which was first proposed by artist Lev Zeitlin in November, is going up this Saturday, June 22. The design is pictured above.

It’s a DOT-sponsored project, organized by Lev and the Flatbush Development Corporation. The Ditmas Park and Ditmas Park West Neighborhood Associations are helping in the efforts, and volunteers are coming out to help with the painting.

As you can see in the “before” picture below, these walls are about to get a lot more colorful. At a Community Board 14 meeting in February, Lev explained how he got interested in doing something here.

“Every time I ride my bike on Dorchester Road, I come across this bridge,” he said. “Everything is so beautiful, and then there’s this concrete slab on the left and on the right, and I had this idea. One day I ran into Sal [Lentini, president of the Ditmas Park Association] and his crew painting over graffiti. I asked him what if, and he thought it was a great idea.”

They talked, and got the FDC involved, then worked with both neighborhood associations on the project.

At the CB14 meeting, Lev spoke of his inspiration for the design, which he says came from the neighborhood.

“Looking around, I noticed certain aspects to Ditmas Park that are like nowhere else,” he said. “The main theme throughout seems to be this rhythm of striation — shingles, vertical fluting. That energy of horizontals and verticals, I thought, was very unique to us, so I wanted to enhance that, make that a signature.

“It will give us a nice, colorful episode as you walk through, and the colors are picked out of the neighborhood,” he continued. “Also that pattern, being so simple, makes it easy to apply, and then, hopefully it doesn’t require much maintenance because we’re hoping it discourages graffiti, it will be easy to maintain.”

If you’d like to help with the painting, stop by starting around 9am on Saturday!