A 307-foot mural on a South Bronx NYCHA tower is now the tallest in the U.S.

A public housing tower in the South Bronx now carries what its backers call the tallest mural in the United States. "Un MAR de Gente / From Every Shore" runs more than 307 feet up the southwest-facing side of a 29-story tower at NYCHA's Morrisania Air Rights (MAR) development, and was unveiled on Tuesday, Oct. 27, the Bronx Times reported.

The mural, by Dominican artist Néstor Omar García, known as Angurria, with Bronx native Fernando Ortiz, depicts MAR residents across generations. "When we began we hoped to create the tallest mural in The Bronx," Tanya Pedler, president of the MAR Resident Association, told the Bronx Times; it ended up the tallest in the country.

Painted from residents' stories

Over about five months this year, the public art nonprofit ArtBridge, which commissioned the piece, ran workshops with residents about how they wanted to be shown. A Muslim girl asked to see a woman in a hijab like hers, which made it into the final work, and a child wearing earmuffs at the top is a nod to neighbors with special needs, according to the Bronx Times.

MAR was built in 1980 on air rights over the Metro-North tracks and its three towers are home to about 1,950 residents, 6sqft reported. The project was paid for with a $165,000 grant from the M·A·C VIVA GLAM Fund and support from the Public Housing Community Fund.

Why NYCHA wanted it

Dylan Baker-Rice, NYCHA's chief asset and capital management officer, said at the unveiling that the authority wants its campuses to be places residents are proud of while it works on the housing itself, the Bronx Times reported. Borough President Vanessa Gibson used the event to warn that arts programs are often the first cut when budgets tighten.