Ilka Tanya Payán Park

What was here before?
This was once the site of Corrigan Hall, a community gathering place that was in operation at the turn of the 20th century. It hosted a workshop to instruct women how to register to vote, was the site of the Washington Heights Hebrew Free School, and the meeting place for the Washington Heights Taxpayers Association. The latter’s secretary, Reginald Pelham Bolton (1856-1942), was a renowned archeologist who preserved a great deal of history from the area.

How did this site become a park?
Tanya Ilka Payán Park is part of the Greenstreets program, which is a joint project of NYC Parks and the NYC Department of Transportation began in 1986 and was revived in 1994 with the goal to convert paved street properties, such as triangles and malls into green spaces.

Who is this park named for?
Tanya Ilka Payán (1943-1996) was an advocate for individuals diagnosed with HIV and AIDS, fighting for their acceptance in society, preventative measures, and funding for medical research.

Born in the Dominican Republic in 1943, Payán immigrated to New York in 1956. She became an actress who starred in popular Spanish language soap operas and had a role in the movie Scarface. Seeking a more stable career, she studied to become a lawyer and practiced immigration law. She was also a contributing columnist for El Diario-La Prensa where she wrote on immigration matters. By 1992, she had become so prominent in Latinx political and civic circles that Mayor David N. Dinkins (1927-2020) named her to the city's Commission on Human Rights.

In 1993, Payán announced that she was HIV-positive, after keeping it secret for nearly eight years in fear of the social stigma that it carried at the time. She became a spokeswoman for the battle against HIV/AIDS and used her platform to educate the Spanish-speaking community on the realities of the virus. Payán died on April 6, 1996. She was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Joaquin Balaguer (1906-2002) of the Dominican Republic for her activism.