Greenwich Village has always been New York’s cultural center, and Washington Square Park is the epicenter of this magical gem. The New York Times, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and even Alexander Hamilton once called the area around Washington Square Park home. Indeed the park has always be an incubator for social reform, creative inspiration, and a place to organize political protest. Although it’s history stems further back to New York’s colonial Dutch heritage. What is a vibrant public space today was bogs, marshes, and swampland with a few meager hills.

Far from Lower Manhattan where New York City had originally sprung to life around the waters of the Hudson and East Rivers, Greenwich Village was a bucolic suburb of sorts. Catering to those willing to venture into the farmlands north of the city, but as the city itself rapidly grew Northward in the 1820’s and 1830’s, the former village became urban. The field that is Washington Square Park was a potter’s yard, or a cemetery for the poor who could afford proper burial. Many slaves were apparently interred here, the possibility of over 1,000 bodies resting under the park is still feasible as renovations usually turn up a handful of skeletons lodged not too deep below the park’s surface.

Not content to have the field be a pauper’s graveyard, Alexander Hamilton and like-minded scholars decided to established a new city university for New York. Of course, what is today modern New York University has it’s origins in Washington Square, not moving much from where it started over 250 years ago. Although NYU established other campuses, a massive Beaux Arts college in the distant Northwest Bronx, Washington Square still grew on it’s merits. The square saw many new uses, one as a military parade ground, and later as the site to commemorate Washington’s 1876 innauguration. Completing that ceremony was Stanford White’s triumphal arch, towering over 5th Avenue. Although the original structure was made of wood, it was quickly rebuilt in permanent limestone and graced with two statues of Washington, one of him as a soldier and the other of him as a statesman.

The 20th Century saw Washington Square evolve as the center for counter-cultural movements. While actors and gays took up new homes surrounding the burgeoning theatre and caberet shows in the area, working class immigrants also poured into the Village from the overcrowded slums of the Lower East Side, Little Italy, and Chinatown. However, working class it might have been, it retained it’s diversity in terms of Asians, Italians, Jews, Irish, as well as new Latin American immigrants arriving in the city by the 1940’s and 1950’s.

Yet by the 1950’s, the park was the center of political battle between the city parks department and a ragtag group of neighbors. Robert Moses, the City Parks Commissioner however sought to drive a large highway through the arch connecting 5th Avenue to the rest of Lower Manhattan, dissecting the park in half and leveling the majority of it’s playgrounds. Yet due to the efforts of Jane Jacobs and fellow Villagers, the park was saved for future generations to enjoy. If you would like to share in the magic and history of this fabled park during your next visit to New York City, take a walking tour with Uncle Sam’s New York City Tours at www.unclesamsnewyork.com and see this amazing piece of history with friends, family, and our own New Yorker guides who never fail to give great trips through old Manhattan.

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