Mosaic Bench around Grant's Tomb being rebuilt

NY1 reports

The mosaic "Around the World" themed bench winding it's way around the Neo-Romanesque tomb for Grant is finally being restored. Visually it can most be compared to a creation by Antoni Gaudi, solid but organic. It morphs and meanders randomly and depicts the various cultures of the entire world through colorful little tiles of glazed pottery. It was always a fun excursion for me when I was a kid. I could walk to it with my parents from my apartment and school which were on 111th street and 112th street respectively. It is around 124th and Riverside Park. It was always a starkly different kind of place from the rough neighborhood and it made my young mind aware of the world of art, memorials to the past, and the cultures of the world SIMULTANEOUSLY. the fact that the same artist is rebuilding it warms my heart.
Above 110th street was quite the dichotomy. Pimps, Hookers, Addicts, Catholics, and Liberals all living in the shadow of the largest Gothic Cathedral in the world.
This is 112th street. I went to school on this corner from 3 to 13 years old.

there's no place like Uptown. even now that it's been taken over by gentrification and the ever expanding reach of Columbia University. There's still Koronet, the largest pizza slices on earth...and they still have video games. although I doubt the tough kids who used to pull knives out are still there...
Commentary by the son of the Artist rebuilding the mosaic bench:

"I was quite young. I was 9, 10, and 11. We took three years to do it," says Tony Silva. "I remember this was a pretty tough neighborhood back then. There was lots of, you know, young hoodlums and gang members around and they were kind of scary folks, but little by little they started to come around and work on the benches themselves and it made them a little less scary to see them excited about a project like this."