The Temple Mount

Yesterday I was in between assignments driving from Union to Newark (yup, in Newark again). I stumbled upon Weequahic Park and in the middle of the park was an old pavilion on a hill. It just struck me as a odd place for this really cool structure. I had to do something with it. So I walked around this thing and made some images - it was trashed - there were broken glass, litter, clothes, graffiti, beer cans, hundreds of those miniature liquor bottles. Oh, and a condom. I kind of chuckled at the condom wondering who on earth would be up here doing somethin somethin...

So I looked past the trash - this was a really cool place - it was on a hill overlooking a large lake and you have an unobstructed 360 degree view. The warm sun was shining thru the pillars casting long shadows inside the pavilion. I was genuinely surprised - it really was pretty... where the hell are my condoms...?

I Googled the park after I edited the image and it has a really cool history - The park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted - this is the same guy who designed Central Park and Prospect Park in NYC along with major parks throughout the US. This next tidbit is for Scotty and Pat - it also has the oldest public golf course in the US - hmmm, who knew? The hill was used by Lenapi Indians to hold pow-wows before being named Divident Hill. Divident Hill was the site of a boundary meeting between Elizabethtown and Newark in 1668, when this place was howling wilderness. The pavilion was built in 1916 to celebrate that meeting 250 years later.

When shooting this, at first I thought about focusing on all the trash around this structure. I'm glad I didn't because I really wanted to capture what a cool spot this was. I named this piece "The Temple Mount". Well, that's what was spray painted on one of the pillars of the pavilion... The real Temple Mount is in Jerusalem. Weequahic was largely a middle class Jewish neighborhood prior to the 1960s, home to many synagogues, yeshivas, and Jewish restaurants. I wonder who spray painted "The Temple Mount"?