Events at the Squares - Washington Square Park (Saty 6/28) and Union Square Park (Wed. 7/2): Reclaim Our Public Space

Washington Square Park and Union Square Park are two of the great public spaces in New York City - each with incredible historical references and ideals. Public space - our commons - is being continually minimized and distorted in the interest of privatization and the ’shopping mall’-ification of the city. Real estate interests and Business improvement districts (BIDS) rule and communities lose out in Mayor Bloomberg’s New York.

Come learn about and reclaim these two great NYC spaces.

Two upcoming events:

Washington Square Park * Saturday, June 28th(tomorrow!), 12 noon

Come to the Walking Tour! WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE:

A Guide to New York City’s Redesign of a Perfect Public Space

(Raindate Saturday, July 12th, 12 noon)

Meet Up at Washington Square Arch, Washington Square North @ Fifth Avenue ; $5

“In the 1950s, Jane Jacobs helped keep cars out of Washington Square. But a new redesign - which will entail dismantling the fountain, removing the chess tables and cutting down decades-old trees - puts the beloved green space in jeopardy all over again. [WSP CID] leads this tour through WSP, which highlights some of the proposed ‘improvements.’” - Time Out NY 6/26/08

Trains: A,B,C,D,E,F to West 4th Street/Washington Square

Presented by Washington Square Park Blog and Washington Square Community Improvement District(CID)

Union Square Park * Wednesday, July 2nd, 6 p.m.

Celebrate this year’s national nativity party ye olde fashioned way…

PUSH BACK PICNIC !

Northern end of the Park, by the Abe Lincoln Statue

As the nation prepares to celebrate it’s 232nd Birthday, and the Union Square BID (Business Improvement District) prepares to privatize the LANDMARKED Pavilion building, come join the Community Improvement District (CID), along with your favorite radical heroes of Union Square for a radical auction action and more. Make a bid on your favorite national chain store franchise! Dance circles around stodgy, stogie-smoking, sell-out politicians! Marvel as the park pushes back against the greedy takeover artists!

Let’s push back the privatizers and keep Union Square a place for public gatherings, public rallies, and public play. PUSH BACK THE BID — UNION SQUARE IS NOT FOR SALE!

More info: Union Square Not For Sale

Event-Walking Tour * Washington Square Park: Past, Present and Future - A Guide to New York City’s Redesign of a Perfect Public Space. Saturday, June 28th

WALKING TOUR: WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE:
A Guide to New York City’s Redesign of a Perfect Public Space
Saturday, June 28th, 12 noon

(Raindate Saturday, July 12th, 12 noon)

Meet Up at Washington Square Arch, Washington Square North @ Fifth Avenue ; $5

Washington Square Park Blog and Washington Square Community Improvement District (CID) present a walking tour: “Washington Square Park Past, Present, and Future: A Guide to New York City’s Redesign of a Perfect Public Space” on Saturday, June 28th at 12 noon.

Community Improvement Districts(CID) are a new model organizing to protect, preserve and promote the well being of our community. The needs of people are our primary concern, distinguishing us from the better known and financed groups referred to as Business Improvement Districts(BIDS), whose sole interest is promoting better business and an environment conducive to shopping. At Washington Square Park, the neighborhood BIDS, along with NYU, the Tisch Family, and Mayor Bloomberg have played a role in a redesign plan that is destroying the very heart of Washington Square Park.

This will be a unique Walking Tour of Washington Square Park Past, Present and Future. It will include a Guide to New York City government’s redesign of Washington Square Park - a controversial project that will alter the historic nature and structure of this successful public space. Pushed through with a non-transparent process by the New York City Parks Department, the redesign of this park is largely unwelcome by the community and was done without listening to community input.

The tour will also include history of the Park (Past) and what’s being done right now(Present).

Trains: A,B,C,D,E,F to West 4th Street/Washington Square

More about Community Improvement Districts (CID) here.

What are New York City’s plans? Click here.

Actually, Mr. Vellonakis, the Washington Square Park Fountain is already aligned. As is, Fountain is Park’s “midpoint”

Watching the screening of the documentary “Washington Square SQUARED” last night at the Bowery Poetry Club, there was some key footage featuring Parks Department designer George Vellonakis. It is his plan that cuts up and moves all the pieces in this successful park into configurations and contortions that few prefer - and yet the plan proceeds.

One moment that stands out (among many) illustrates his empathy. Who does Mr. Vellonakis have empathy for? The community who likes the park the way it is? No. The trees that have stood in the park for 80 years that he wants chopped down? Not quite. His empathy is reserved for the “poor tourists” who (he believes) can’t take good pictures of themselves with the famous Arch behind them — because there is a tree in the way!

Well, luckily, those tourists have Mr. Vellonakis, NYC Parks Commissioner Benepe, and Mayor Bloomberg on their side because that obstructionist tree (along with 13 others) is no longer there!

There is much discussion of the “aligning” of the fountain in the film — the Parks Department plan is to move it 23 feet east so that it aligns with the Arch at Fifth Avenue. There’s much appreciation by users of the Park of the un-alignment of the fountain and the Arch. Something about the fountain not being connected to Fifth Avenue works when you enter Washington Square Park: you escape the city - yet you meld with your neighbors within it in unimaginable and unique ways. It’s a great public space. Mr. Vellonakis’s design aspires to destroy that.

But a little known fact that is somewhat key is that the fountain actually IS aligned. It’s not a mistake that it was in that specific location.

In Emily Kies Folpe’s book, It happened on Washington Square, she writes at length about the installation of the fountain. She states that the fountain was “placed at the midpoint of the park’s east-west axis, the fountain gave the Square a definitive central focus.” The fountain was installed in 1870 and “dominates its center.” When the park was redesigned in 1871, retaining that focal point was a key part of the design plan. Folpe writes in her 2002 book, “Despite later changes, the legacy of the 1871 design lingers on in today’s Washington Square.”

Until Mayor Bloomberg and the New York City Parks Department get their way, and move the famous fountain to align with the Arch, and that’s the end of something that’s worked quite successfully for 137 years.

** The above is a schematic of the new redesign. Don’t let all the greenery fool you.**

Portrait: Washington Square, 1910 - William Glackens

William Glackens was born in 1870 in Philadelphia, where he began his career as a newspaper illustrator and reporter. Around 1900, he moved to New York with other artists who worked as illustrators and painters, depicting scenes of everyday life in the growing metropolis.

One of Glackens’ favorite subjects was Washington Square Park, an old city square that separated Greenwich Village, a working-class neighborhood where many Italian immigrants had settled, and the well-to-do neighborhoods north of the square.

Glackens drew and painted the view from his studio on the south edge of the square, focusing on the various types of people who frequented the park. Glackens’ scenes record the mixing of social classes that occurred in New York City.

In his more than twenty paintings of Washington Square between 1909 and 1914, Glackens often repeats certain figures and motifs. He frequently used the tree at the center of the picture to anchor his compositions, many of which depict the same corner as in the New Britain painting.

After 1915 Glackens became most famous for his Impressionist still lifes and figure studies, which were often compared to those of the French Impressionist Pierre-August Renoir. He died in 1938.

Primary Text (Edited) and Painting: New Britain Museum of American Art New Britain Connecticut

Washington Square Arch: Exitus Acta Probat

On each side of the famous Arch at Washington Square Park stands George Washington in two distinct poses: Washington At War on the East side of the pedestal of the Arch and Washington At Peace on the West.

The Arch was designed by by noted period architect Stanford White(1853-1906). Originally built in wood (and standing half a block away from its current location) for the Centennial of Washington’s inauguration in 1889, it was then commissioned in marble and completed in its current location in the early 1890’s.

About the figure of Washington At War, in her book, “It Happened on Washington Square,” Emily Kies Folpe writes that the sculptor Herman A. Mac Neil “intended the figure” “to appear alert and intent, as if watching the maneuvers of his army.” Behind Washington are the “allegorical” figures of Fame and Valor.

Pictured in this photo (above) is Washington At Peace (A. Stirling Calder). Behind Washington are figures representing Wisdom and Justice.

Wisdom stands there as “the modern Athena” (Greek goddess of wisdom). And then we come to the figure of Justice. Folpe writes, “Justice, draped and crowned, holding a balanced set of scales with one hand and an open book in the other. The pages of the book are inscribed with the words ‘Exitus acta probat.’ ” Exitus acta probat, I’ve learned, is taken from the George Washington Family Coat of Arms.

So what does “exitus acta probat” mean exactly?

It’s Latin and I’ve come across various ways of interpreting it, all similar but slight variations.

The basic translation is: the outcome justifies the deed.

It’s the pairing of that statement with the figure of Justice that puzzles me. I like to think at Washington Square Park that ultimately there will be some kind of ‘Justice’ in what transpires in the design and outcome of the Park. The scales have been unbalanced to date. And I can’t help wondering if there is some message there for those of us who’d like to see a different outcome at Washington Square Park (other than the city’s “vision” for it). Is there some missing deed?

Of course, Stanford White’s “outcome” was a little bit jarring. He was shot on the roof of the Madison Square Garden building (the second incarnation - no longer there) by the husband of an ex-lover. Madison Square Garden also being a building he designed.

The Skeletons of Washington Square Park

Washington Square Park “Renovation”
(note: fountain entirely torn up now; trees gone.)

Washington Square Park first came into being as a Park in the 1850’s. It was a Potter’s field (a “common” burial ground) from 1797-1825. It is believed that up to 20,000 people were buried there (and are still there) from that time period.

In mid-to-late January of this year, while excavating the park during their “renovation,” City workers found at least 4 intact skeletons and 70-80 human bones.

Manhattan Borough Parks Commissioner William Castro asserted previously to the community in front of local Community Board 2 - to address concerns about precisely this issue - that the Parks Department would not be digging more than 1-3 feet deep. The city then unconscionably proceeded to dig from 7 to 11 feet below grade.

The City told the Associated Press in January that the bones would be “analyzed” and “reburied respectfully.”

NYC 24 blog has a new story about the bones resurfacing in Washington Square Park.

And, of course, digging up skeletons can have many meanings. Skeletons ‘of our past’ means interfering with the historical and emotional center of our beings — which is exactly what New York City is attempting to do with their excavation of Washington Square Park.

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As a new blog, word of mouth is very important. We’d like to thank Patti Smith for linking to our site. She asks, “What is happening to OUR Washington Square Park?”

Jane Jacobs

Washington Arch, 1955

In 1961, Jane Jacobs released The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Jane Jacobs had already made a name for herself as a community activist in the West Village.

At one point, the Washington Square Park Arch had cars running around - and through - it. Jacobs was involved with others in ending this. (See photo: Arch from 1955. Note cars.)

In her groundbreaking book on how we view planning of cities, she writes of NYC’s recurring plans to play around with Washington Square Park: “The city officials regularly concoct improvement schemes by which this center within the park would be sown to grass and flowers and surrounded by a fence. The invariable phrase to describe this is, ‘restoring the land to park use.’ That is a different form of park use, legitimate in places. But for neighborhood parks, the finest centers are stage settings for people.”

Forty seven years later, the city is bent on destroying Jacobs’ vision of what makes a successful public park.