Upper West Side Phone Booth Transformed Into Overflowing Flower Display

Photo by Irini Arakas Greenbaum

For almost three years now, floral designer Lewis Miller, who runs Lewis Miller Design (LMD), has been going around the city leaving gorgeous flower displays in garbage cans, statues and anywhere else that inspires him in an attempt to lift New Yorkers' spirits and take our minds off of the fact that every square inch of this city is soaked in rat urine. He unleashed one of his most ambitious "flower flashes" this week on the Upper West Side, when he and his team turned one of the last phone booths in the city into a flower repository.

"We had never done a phone booth before," Miller told Gothamist. "We were debating between a phone booth and a fire escape but ultimately this iconic phone booth on 100th Street and West End Avenue won out! During the execution of this particular flash so many neighborhood folk came out to tell us the history of this booth. It's a working telephone and there is even a children's book written about it called The Lonely Phone Booth."

Miller has been repurposing flowers from their events since 2016 to stage one of these "flower flashes" about once a month. The project first kicked off in October 2016, when he and his team brought 2,000 flowers to the John Lennon "Imagine" Memorial in Central Park, and proceeded to create "a psychedelic halo of day-glo yellow, pink, purple and orange dahlias and carnations."

Since then, they've placed flowers at a multitude of urban locations, including construction sites, subway entrances, gravel pits, historic statues, dumpsters, subway nooks, and abandoned church steps. One of his favorites remains the "Sunflower flash" around safety cones, which you can see below.

Photo by Irini Arakas Greenbaum

Miller's initial idea was to "create an emotional response through flowers," and "gift the people of New York the same experience he gives his paying clients." Asked what he hoped people would take away from the project, he previously told Gothamist, "Smiles and a feeling of surprise and wonder. I don't think New Yorkers are expecting to see Alice in Wonderland wearing a 30 foot long flower boa on their morning run or while walking their dog at 6 a.m. New Yorkers are hard to surprise and hard to please, so if we can lure a childlike reaction out of them, that's a victory and a gift to [me and my team]."

Over the years he's continued the project, he says he's gotten overwhelmingly positive reactions from locals and the DSNY (despite the fact the flowers occasionally prevent a garbage can from being used). "These Flower Flashes are for the people of New York," he told us. "They are meant to be taken down at the end of the day and the flowers gifted to New Yorkers. Once we finish a Flash (they typically take less than 20 minutes to make) our part is done. What happens to them next is completely out of our hands."

The impermanence of the displays is part of their appeal, he believes: "We try and gently suggest that people try and keep them in tact for a few hours but honestly, we have had trash can Flower Flashes be taken apart in less than an hour," he said. "It’s at times heartbreaking to know that something you made can disappear that quickly but quite honestly, it’s that delicious impermanence that makes them so special. The only push back we have encountered is the occasional disgruntled dog walker who is beyond irritated that we have filled his trash can with flowers, but we try and politely direct him across the street where he can find another trash can to deposit his poop bag!"

They also performed their first "flower flash" inside a subway station last summer, which you can see below. "We actually called it a Flower Spark because it was very small. I used these beautiful micro Lillies and Lily of the Valley. The juxtaposition of these delicate blooms nestled in a grimy crevice inside a metal beam on a subway platform felt so romantic and surprising."

In the latest Instagram post for the phone booth display, Miller wrote, "1-800-FLOWER-FLASH" in the caption. I asked whether he'd consider having an actual number like that so people could request a flower flash in their neighborhood: "Unfortunately, the Flower Flash number is not real, but maybe one day!"