A towering new mural now stretches 29 stories up a NYCHA building in the South Bronx, transforming the Morrisania Air Rights tower in Melrose into a vertical portrait of the neighborhood it houses. The artwork covers the building on East 158th Street between Morris and Park Avenues, and it is already pulling residents and passersby out onto the sidewalk to crane their necks upward.
According to PIX11, the project is a collaboration between the Morrisania Air Rights Residents Association, the Public Housing Community Fund and ArtBridge. The station reports that residents played a major role in shaping the mural's final design through a series of community workshops, giving the people who live in the building direct influence over the image now painted across its facade.
Grandmothers, Hydrants and a Neighborhood's Own Faces
The finished mural depicts scenes pulled straight from daily life in Melrose: a grandmother in hair rollers holding a baby, community members representing a variety of cultures, and two children playing near a fire hydrant, per the station's report. Organizers have called the piece the tallest mural in the United States, though that claim has not been independently verified with an official record certification.
Estimates of just how tall the mural actually is vary by source. Dominican outlet El Seis reports that the painted surface reaches between 260 and 290 feet of elevation, based on measurements provided by the muralist's team, and the artistic team there said the work surpassed an earlier piece in Miami. That Miami comparison, according to Miami Today, was a four-mural installation by artist MadC occupying 245 feet of vertical space on the Excel Miami residential tower.
Who Painted It — and a Name That Depends on the Source
PIX11 identifies the artist behind the Bronx mural as Nestor Garcia, who works professionally under the name Angurria. Dominican outlet Carib Alent, however, refers to the same artist as Omar García while describing him as the Dominican visual artist nearing completion of the monumental Bronx mural. Carib Alent also notes that the mural has been described in media coverage as the tallest in the United States, while cautioning that its final dimensions and any official record have not been independently verified.
A formal dedication ceremony for the mural is expected Tuesday, October 27, alongside weekend activities tied to its debut, PIX11 reports. The mural has already begun drawing attention from both residents and visitors to the block.
Part of a Wider Push for Public Art Across NYCHA
The Melrose mural arrives amid a broader wave of community-driven public art across New York City's public housing developments. The NYCHA Journal reports that the 2026 NYCHA Resident Climate Action Grants program awarded grants to 35 winners across NYCHA communities, and a separate Bronx mural at Claremont Consolidated covered 1,500 square feet with more than 100 residents taking part in painting it.
ArtBridge's Bridging the Divide program has had an even larger footprint, installing more than 50 public artworks on construction fencing and sidewalk sheds at 16 NYCHA developments over a span of ten months, according to the NYCHA Journal. That effort commissioned 50 local artists, including 19 who were themselves NYCHA residents, and involved hundreds of workshops and community events. A related Green Space Connections initiative, reported by the Bronx Times, is working to create community-designed green space at four public housing developments serving 14,000 residents across Brooklyn and the Bronx.
