Famous City Parks: Union Square, New York City

Union Square is an important and historic intersection and surrounding neighborhood in Manhattan, New York City, located where Broadway and the former Bowery Road – now Fourth Avenue – came together in the early 19th century; its name celebrates neither the Federal union of the United States nor labor unions but rather denotes that "here was the union of the two principal thoroughfares of the island". The current Union Square Park is bounded by 14th Street on the south, Union Square West on the west side, 17th Street on the north, and on the east Union Square East, which links together Broadway and Park Avenue South to Fourth Avenue and the continuation of Broadway. The park is under the aegis of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

Adjacent neighborhoods are the Flatiron District to the north, Chelsea to the west, Greenwich Village to the southwest, East Village to the southeast, and Gramercy Park to the east. Many buildings of The New School are near the square, as are several dormitories of New York University. The eastern side of the square is dominated by the four Zeckendorf Towers, on the former site of the bargain-priced department store, S. Klein, and the south side by the full-square block mixed-use One Union Square South. It features a kinetic wall sculpture and digital clock expelling bursts of steam, titled Metronome. Among the heterogeneous assortment of buildings along the west side is the Decker Building.

Union Square is noted for its impressive equestrian statue of U.S. President George Washington, modeled by Henry Kirke Brown and unveiled in 1856, the first public sculpture erected in New York City since the equestrian statue of George III in 1770, and the first American equestrian sculpture cast in bronze; the historic moment depicted is Evacuation Day, November 25, 1783, when the British left the city and General Washington triumphantly led his troops back into the city. The park has historically been the start or the end point for many political demonstrations. In April 1861, soon after the fall of Fort Sumter, it was the site of a patriotic rally of perhaps a quarter of a million people that is thought to have been the largest public gathering in North America up to that time. In the summer of 1864 the north side of the square was the site of a "Sanitary Fair".

Union Square has been a frequent gathering point for radicals of all stripes to make speeches or demonstrate. In 1865, the recently formed Irish republican Fenian Brotherhood came out publicly and rented Dr. John Moffat's brownstone rowhouse at 32 East 17th Street, next to the Everett House hotel facing the north side of the square, for the capitol of the government-in-exile they declared. On September 5, 1882, in the first Labor Day celebration, a crowd of at least 10,000 workers paraded up Broadway and filed past the reviewing stand at Union Square. Although the park was known for its labor union rallies and for the large 1861 gathering in support of Union troops, it was actually named for its location at the "union" of Bloomingdale Road (now Broadway) and Eastern Post Road (now extinct) decades before these gatherings. On March 28, 1908, an anarchist set off a bomb in Union Square which only killed himself and another man. Union Square was named a National Historic Landmark in 1997, primarily to honor it as the site of the first Labor Day parade.

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