Washington Square Park is a public park in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. It is an icon as well as a meeting place and center for cultural activity. The park is operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (NYC Parks).
The park is an open space, dominated by the Washington Square Arch at the northern gateway to the park, with a tradition of celebrating nonconformity. The park's fountain area has long been one of the city's popular spots, and many of the local buildings have at one time served as homes and studios for artists. Many buildings have been built by New York University, while others have been converted from their former uses into academic and residential buildings. __TOC__
Location and features
Located at the foot of Fifth Avenue, the park is bordered by Washington Square North (known as Waverly Place east and west of the park), Washington Square East (known as University Place north of the park), Washington Square South (known as West 4th Street east and west of the park), and Washington Square West (known as MacDougal Street north and south of the park).
While the park contains many flower beds and trees, little of the park is used for plantings due to the paving. The two prominent features are the Washington Square Arch and the Tisch Fountain. It includes children's play areas, trees and gardens, paths to stroll on, a chess and Scrabble playing area, park benches, picnic tables, commemorative statuary and two dog runs.
Those commemorated by statues and monuments include George Washington; Italian patriot and soldier Giuseppe Garibaldi, commander of the insurrectionist forces in Italy's struggle for unification; and Alexander Lyman Holley, a talented engineer who helped start the American steel industry after the invention of the Bessemer process for mass-producing steel.
The New York City Police Department operates security cameras in the park. The park has a curfew from midnight to 6 a.m.
History Early usage
The land was once divided by a narrow marshy valley through which Minetta Creek (or Brook) ran.Geismar, Joan H. Washington Square Park: Phase 1A Archaeological Assessment , New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, August 2005. Accessed October 1, 2007. See page 24 of the cited document (page number 30 in the attached PDF.) In the early 17th century, a Native American village known as Sapohanikan, p. 1381 or "Tobacco Field" was nearby. By the mid-17th century, the land on each side of the Minetta was used as farm land by the Dutch. The Dutch gave the land, then outside the city limits (Wall Street) to Angolan residents of the colony, intending for their plots and settlement to serve as a buffer zone to Native Americans outside the settlement. In 1643, a group of "half-freed" slaves and elders such as Domingo Anthony, Manuel Trumpeter and Catalina Anthony, received land grants to build and maintain farms in the areas containing and surrounding Washington Square Park. The families who received the land were no longer slaves, but had to give a portion of the profits they received from the land to the Dutch West India Company and pay annual land fees. Their children would be born as slaves, rather than free. The area became the core of an early African American community in New York, then called the Land of the Blacks and later "Little Africa". Among those who owned parcels in what is now Washington Square Park was Paulo D'Angola and his wife Reytory Angola.More information can be found at the exhibit "Slavery in New York" at the New-York Historical Society of Manhattan.
It remained farmland until April 1797, when the Common Council of New York purchased the fields to the east of the Minetta (which were not yet within city limits) for a new potter's field, or public burial ground. The city bought all but the western thirty feet of the square from land owner Elbert Herring, and drained the swamp, utilizing it as a graveyard for victims of communicable diseases, unknown or unclaimed person, and those too poor to provide for their own burial. When New York City (which did not include this area yet) went through yellow fever epidemics in the early 19th century, most of those who died from yellow fever were buried here, away from town, as a hygienic measure. "From 1789 to 1823, in two-thirds of the present park site, from 10,000 to 22,000 bodies were hastily buried in this potters field." The cemetery was closed in 1825. To this day, the remains of more than 20,000 bodies rest under Washington Square. Excavations have found tombstones under the park dating as far back as 1799.Sulzberger, A. G. "Gravestone From 1799 Is Found in Washington Square Park", The New York Times, October 28, 2009. Accessed April 14, 2016.
A legend in many tourist guides says that the large elm at the northwest corner of the park, Hangman's Elm, was the old hanging tree. However, research indicates the tree was on the side of the former Minetta Creek that was the back garden of a private house. Records of only one public hanging at the potter's field exist. Two eyewitnesses to the recorded hanging differed on the location of the gallows. One said it had been put up at a spot where the fountain was prior to 2007 park redesign. Others placed the gallows closer to where the arch is now.
Creation of Washington Square
In 1826, Alderman Abraham Valentine "introduced a resolution to re-appropriate an old potter's field into a military parade ground,""From Potter's Field to Parade Ground" January 12, 2021 and the city bought the land west of Minetta Creek, the square was laid out and leveled, and it was turned into the Washington Military Parade Ground. Military parade grounds were public spaces specified by the city where volunteer militia companies responsible for the nation's defense would train.
The streets surrounding the square became one of the city's most desirable residential areas in the 1830s. The protected row of Greek Revival style houses on the north side of the park remains from that time.
In 1849 and 1850, the parade ground was reworked into the first park on the site. More paths were added and a new fence was built around it. In 1871, it came under the control of the newly formed New York City Department of Parks, and it was redesigned again, with curving rather than straight secondary paths.
Construction of the arch and addition of statues
In 1889, to celebrate the centennial of George Washington's inauguration as president of the United States, a large plaster and wood Memorial Arch was erected over Fifth Avenue just north of the park. Freemasons from St. John's Lodge No. 1 lead a procession through the arch with the George Washington Inaugural Bible for the Centennial Parade of Washington's Inauguration. The temporary plaster and wood arch was so popular that in 1892, a permanent Tuckahoe marble arch, designed by the New York architect Stanford White, was erected, standing and modeled after the Arc de Triomphe, built in Paris in 1806. During the excavations for the eastern part of the arch, human remains, a coffin, and a gravestone dated to 1803 were uncovered below ground level.The first fountain next to the arch was completed in 1852 and then replaced in 1872. In 1851 it was described as having "a very large circular basin, with a central jet and several side jets." A story on the completion of the fountain appeared in the first edition of the New-York Daily Times, which would eventually become the New York Times. The statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi was unveiled in 1888. In 1918, two statues of George Washington were added to the north side.
Early 20th-century renovation
Robert Moses became the New York City Parks Commissioner in 1934. He embarked on a crusade to fully redesign Washington Square Park, and local activists began an opposing fight that lasted three decades.
In 1934, Robert Moses had the fountain renovated to also serve as a wading pool. In 1952, Moses finalized plans to extend 5th Avenue through the park. He intended to eventually push it through the neighborhood south of the park, as part of an urban renewal project. Area residents, including Eleanor Roosevelt, opposed the plans. The urbanist Jane Jacobs became an activist and is credited with stopping the Moses plan and closing Washington Square Park to all auto traffic, but Jacobs, in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, praised another local advocate in the fight against park traffic, Shirley Hayes: "Hayes and the Washington Square Park Committee advocated eliminating the existing road, that is, closing the park to all automobile traffic – but at the same time, not widening the perimeter roads either. In short, they proposed closing off a roadbed without compensating for it."Jacobs, Jane (1961). The Death and Life of Great American cities, p.471. Modern Library, New York. .
Hayes, former chairman of the Washington Square Park Committee and member of the Greenwich Village Community Planning Board, a local resident and mother of four sons, started a public outcry for the park in 1952 when a large, modern apartment building was constructed on the northwest corner of Washington Square North and Fifth Avenue. When then-Manhattan borough president Hulan E. Jack suggested an elevated pedestrian walkway over a four-lane road through the park, Ms. Hayes initiated "Save the Square!", a seven-year battle to keep automobiles out of the quiet area. Though several different proposals were given for a roadway in the park, Hayes and her followers rejected them all. Seeking to "best serve the needs of children and adults of this family community," Hayes in turn presented her own proposal: 1.75 acres (700m2) of roadway would be converted to parkland, a paved area would be created for emergency access only, and all other vehicles would be permanently banned from the park. This plan received widespread support, including that of then-Congressman John Lindsay, as well as Washington Square Park West resident Eleanor Roosevelt. After a public hearing in 1958, a "ribbon tying" ceremony was held to mark the inception of a trial period in which the park would be free of vehicular traffic. In August 1959, the efforts of Ms. Hayes and her allies paid off; from that time forward Washington Square Park has been completely closed to traffic. A plaque commemorating her tireless crusade can be seen in the park today. Hayes's papers are archived at the New-York Historical Society.
Mid- and late 20th century
Following the end of World War II, folksingers had been congregating on warm Sunday afternoons at the fountain in the center of the park. Tension and conflicts began to develop between the bohemian element and the remaining working-class residents of the neighborhood. The city government began showing an increasing hostility to the use of public facilities by the public and, in 1947, began requiring permits before public performances could be given in any city park.
In the spring of 1961, the new parks commissioner Newbold Morris refused a permit to the folksingers for their Sunday afternoon gatherings, because "the folksingers have been bringing too many undesirable [beatnik] elements into the park." On April 9, 1961, folk music pioneer Izzy Young, owner of the Folklore Center—who had been trying to get permits for the folksingers—and about 500 musicians and supporters gathered in the park and sang songs without a permit, then held a procession from the park through the arch at Fifth Avenue, and marched to the Judson Memorial Church on the other side of the park; the New York City Police Department was sent into the park, attacked civilians with billy clubs, and arrested 10 people. The incident made the front pages of newspapers as far away as Washington, DC. The New York Mirror initially reported it as a "Beatnik Riot", but retracted the headline in the next edition, although tensions remained for a while.