Homenaje a Lillian Marrero (Tribute to Lillian Marrero)

Homenaje a Lillian Marrero (Memorial to Lillian Marrero) by artist Danny Torres is located in Hartranft neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This mural is a tribute to Lillian Marrero, a beloved librarian at the Free Library of Philadelphia branch located across the street from the mural (the branch has since been named for her). In addition to Marrero’s passion for educational initiatives empowering the underprivileged by assisting them with housing, jobs, and English as a second language, she set up a computer lab at the library branch for the community. She also loved to garden, and she planted one at the library branch and worked to build green spaces in the neighborhood. Included in the mural are the words: EDUCACION (education), AMISTAD (friendship), GENTE (people), AYUDA (help), IGLES (English), EMPLEO (jobs).

This mural was included in the My North Philly project that traced the stories of four communities — Nicetown, Kensington, el Norte de Filadelfia, Strawberry Mansion — in North Philadelphia through the oral histories that inspired the creation of seven landmark murals. At the beginning of 2005, the Mural Arts Program began a new odyssey. The My North Philly project aimed to collect the stores that residents of North Philadelphia told about their neighborhoods and to give those words a lasting life through a series of murals. Out of the myriad North Philadelphia neighborhoods, four communities –two east and two west of Broad Street — were chosen with an eye to the history and diverse experiences of the area and Mural Arts established partnerships with neighborhood churches, libraries, resident associations, and community groups. Over the next three years, artists and oral historians from the Program reached out to folks in these communities, taped and transcribed oral histories and group discussions, and pored over the themes, images, and events that interviewees described. By autumn of 2007, seven murals had been painted, one final mural was in progress, and more than ninety North Philadelphians had told their stories — the stories of their North Philly. Though neither the people who told their stories nor the murals that those stories inspired speak for all of North Philly, they capture, in a personal way, some of the lived experiences of the place that many Philadelphians just call “home.”