Tallest US Mural Covers 29 Stories of NYCHA's Morrisania Air Rights

What happened

A Dominican artist known as Angurria, whose name is Nestor Omar García, has painted what organizers call the largest mural in the country on a NYCHA building in the South Bronx. City Limits reported the story on 11/05/2026. The mural is 307 feet tall and covers all 29 stories of the southwest-facing side of Morrisania Air Rights. That public housing development was built in 1980 using air rights over Metro-North rail tracks. About 1,950 residents live there.

The mural is titled "Un MAR de Gente / From Every Shore." Angurria finished it in 22 days with two assistants. He worked from a scaffold elevator, often eight to nine hours a day. He said wind was the main challenge, moving the lift two or three meters. A ribbon cutting was held on 10/27/2026, where Congressman Ritchie Torres spoke.

ArtBridge, a New York City nonprofit, commissioned the work. It partnered with the Public Housing Community Fund (PHCF), a nonprofit NYCHA created in 2016 to help with privately funded projects and resident input. The M·A·C VIVA GLAM Fund gave ArtBridge a $165,000 grant for the mural. Tanya Pedler, president of the development's resident association, said she contacted PHCF about a year ago because the walls looked bad. Residents shaped the design through outreach and workshops. One image shows a child in headphones, reflecting children with sensory processing disorders. A 13-year-old resident asked for representation of Black and brown Muslim girls.

City Limits also reported on other work at the development. Pedler called on the city in 2022 to renovate the playground, which residents said was unsafe because of drug and criminal activity. It has since received about $1 million in investments, largely through federal funding secured by Torres in 2024. About $750,000 of that is going to a sensory playground and garden.