Famous Parks: Washington Square Park, New York City

Washington Square Park is a 9.75-acre public park in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. One of the best known of New York City's 1,900 public parks, it is a landmark as well as a meeting place and center for cultural activity. It is operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

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 for residents and tourists. Most of the buildings surrounding the park now belong to New York University, but many have at one time served as homes and studios for artists. Some of the buildings have been built by NYU while others have been converted from their former uses into academic and residential buildings.

Located at the foot of Fifth Avenue, the park is bordered by Washington Square North (Waverly Place east and west of the park), Washington Square East (University Place north of the park), Washington Square South (West 4th Street east and west of the park), and Washington Square West (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 a large 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.
Giuseppe Garibaldi

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 one to 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 New York University Department of Public Safety also keeps a watch on the park, and the city parks department has security officers who sometimes patrol the park. The area has a low crime rate in the "safest big city in the United States.

The land was once divided by a narrow marshy valley through which Minetta Creek (or Brook) ran. In the early 17th century, a Native American village known as Sapokanican 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 to slaves, thus freeing them, with the intention of using them as a buffer zone to hostile Native Americans outside the settlement. The slaves that received the land were told that, although they were no longer slaves, they had to give a portion of the profits they received from the land to the Dutch West India Company. Also, their children would be born as slave, rather than free. The tract was in the possession of African Americans from 1643 to 1664. Today, the area, then called "The Land of the Blacks," is Washington Square Park. The ex-slaves who owned "The Land of the Blacks" included Paulo D'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. It was used mainly for burying unknown or indigent people when they died. But when New York (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 also buried here, safely away from town, as a hygienic measure.

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