ArchGate: When Villagers Reclaimed Washington Square

From 14th Street to Houston Street, river to river, the streets and avenues of our neighborhoods ooze with a rich, unique lore found nowhere else in the city. 

At its center lies Fifth Avenue, dividing Manhattan’s east and west sides. Like many Manhattan streets, Fifth Avenue grew out of the original 1811 Commissioner’s Plan grid. Its development was slow, approved by the City Council in segments, beginning with the southernmost section. So, on November 1, 1824, from Washington Square North (then called Art Street), Fifth Avenue first opened to the public.

Today, Fifth Avenue extends far beyond lower Manhattan, reaching 143rd Street in Harlem. At its base, however, lies the iconic Washington Square Park with the Washington Square Arch at the core of Greenwich Village. 

Long before there was a park, however, the area was a lush marshland known as Sapokanican. Today, archaeologists cite Sapokanican as one of several Manhattan villages (once known as Mannahatta Island) occupied by the Lenape people before European colonization. The Lenape resided mainly in the Southeast region of the village, in large part due to Minetta Creek—a valuable water source that provided the Lenape with a steady trout stream. Translating to “wild tobacco,” Sapokanican provided the Lenape with a rich, natural capital and the foundation for their thriving society. By 1629, the Dutch began violently removing the Lenape from the area after Governor Wouter van Twiller received a grant for a Tobacco plantation for the Dutch West India Company.

After Dutch settlement, industrialization gradually began to reshape the neighborhood, and the park’s land was used as farmland for newly freed Black slaves in exchange for some of their harvest. After the Revolutionary War, the land was transformed yet again. This time, the city fathers of New York acquired some of this property for use as a potter’s field, a public burial place where poor people, mostly victims of yellow fever, were laid to rest. With New York’s rapid development, though, the makeshift cemetery did not last long. On July 4, 1826 (the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence), the land officially became the Washington Parade Ground. Leveled and landscaped, the new parade ground dovetailed Fifth Avenue’s 1824 opening, conferred a privileged status on the area, and helped elevate the value of the surrounding real estate. 

Throughout the nineteenth century, the park was the site of riots, mirroring the simmering racial tension from the years surrounding the Civil War. But with Manhattan’s population boom, development followed. After the war in 1870, Boss Tweed hired Ignaz Pilate and Montgomery Kellogg to restore the square’s peace, harmony, and aesthetics by turning it into a more fashionable, polished park. 

Nearly twenty years later, in 1889, the City set out to honor the one hundredth anniversary of George Washington’s inauguration in a three-day-long celebration at Federal Hall on Wall Street. Determined to have the festivities pass by his house, William Rhinelander Stewart of 17 Washington Square North commissioned architect Stanford White to design a temporary monument honoring President George Washington for the entrance to Washington Square Park. While at first the structure was temporary papier-mache and white plaster, the arch became a permanent, marble installation after garnering widespread public support.

Ever since, the park and the arch have become an emblem of all that the Village represents: architectural beauty and artistry, protest and political change, and communal gatherings and celebration. It’s where, for centuries, mavericks and rogues strayed from the beaten path to advocate for change and find creative solutions. And on January 23rd, 1917, a group of young Village troublemakers proved this true.

In the wee hours of that snowy winter night, artist Marcel Duchamp, painter John Sloan, poet Gertrude Drick, and a handful of actors from the Provincetown Players theatre collective stood at the summit of their world (or, to the rest of us, climbed the internal staircase to the top of the Washington Square Arch). Commonly referred to as the Arch Conspirators, the group set out to establish the Free and Independent Republic of Washington Square, solidified by Drick’s ceremonious recitation of the newly established, one-word constitution that read, Whereas!” “Whereas!” “Whereas!”

And the arch conspirators surely made themselves known and comfortable while up on the arch. They decorated with blankets, Chinese lanterns, and red balloons. It was a drunken party where they sipped on liquor and tea, set off cap pistols into the park, and stayed up until dawn.

With America’s involvement in World War I looming, the arch conspirators’ transgression could be considered an act of peaceful protest, voicing opposition to the increasingly militant direction of U.S. foreign policy. So while the repercussions of their drunken crime are lesser known, the same defiant energy remained ever-present in the park and greater neighborhood for years to come. As the decades passed, artists of similar ilk and rebellion continued to pass through, utilizing the park as their meeting ground. It was a safe, accepting open-air salon for the folk singers to sing, the Beatniks to discuss, and activists to organize. 

While the legend of the Arch Conspirators may have been forgotten in the mainstream, their essence continues to live on through all generations of Villagers who strive for creative expression and change.