Tompkins Square Park
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Tompkins Square Park is a 10.5 acre (42,000 m²) public park in the Alphabet City section of the East Village neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is square in shape, and is bounded on the north by East 10th Street, on the east by Avenue B, on the south by East 7th Street, and on the west by Avenue A. St. Marks Place abuts the park to the west.
History
Tompkins Square Park is named for Daniel D. Tompkins (1774–1825), Vice President of the United States under President James Monroe and the Governor of New York from 1807 until 1817. The park was landscaped by 1850 and has been a public park since the late 1870s.
In the middle 19th century the "Square" included a large parade ground for drilling the New York National Guard. The modern layout of the park by Robert Moses in 1936 is said to be intended to divide and manage crowds that have gathered there in protest since the 1870's. That tradition was rekindled as the park became the nursery of demonstrations against the Vietnam War in the 1960s.
By the 1980s Tompkins Square Park had become for many New Yorkers synonymous with the city's increased social problems. The park at that time was a high-crime area that contained encampments of homeless people, and it was a center for illegal drug dealing and heroin use.
In August 1988, a police riot erupted in the park when police attempted to clear the park of homeless people; 44 people were injured. Bystanders as well as homeless people and political activists got caught up in the police action that took place on the night of August 6 and the early morning of August 7, after a large number of police surrounded the park and charged at the hemmed-in crowd while other police ordered all pedestrians not to walk on streets neighboring the park. Much of the violence was videotaped and clips were shown on local TV news reports (notably including one by a man who sat on his stoop across the street from the park and continued to film while a police officer beat him up), but ultimately, although at least one case went to trial, no police officers were punished.
Increasing gentrification in the East Village during the 1990s and 2000s, as well as enforcement of a park curfew and the eviction of homeless people, have changed the character of Tompkins Square Park. The park was closed and refurbished in the early 1990s and today, with its playgrounds and basketball courts, handball courts and outdoor chess boards, the park attracts young families, students and seniors as well as tourists from all over the globe.
Attractions
The outdoor drag festival Wigstock, held in the park, is now part of the Howl Festival. That summertime festival also features one day of the two days of the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, a musical tribute to a famous former resident of Avenue B. There is also an annual "Riot Reunion" concert every summer that features the neighborhood punk-rock band Leftover Crack.
The [Tompkins Square Dog Run] was recently named by Dog Fancy magazine as one of the top five dog parks in the United States.
Monuments
- There is a monument the north side of the park to the General Slocum boating disaster on June 15, 1904. This was the greatest single loss of life in New York City prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks. Thirteen hundred people, mainly German immigrant mothers and children, drowned in the East River that day. The area near the park, formerly known as Little Germany, effectively dissolved in grief as shattered German families moved away. This disaster is also memorialized in James Joyce's novel Ulysses.
- The park is also the place where Indian Sadhu A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada came to sing and preach in 1965, beginning the worldwide Hare Krishna movement. An elm tree in the park's southern plaza that he chanted beneath is now considered sacred to the Hare Krishna faith, as noted by a New York City Parks Department plaque. [link]
- The southeast corner of the park contains a statue of Samuel Cox, a 19th Century politician who represented New York City in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1869 until 1885. [link]
External links
- [Tompkins Square Park information] at the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation website
- [Letter from Tompkins Square Park]
- [The History of the Tompkins Square Police Riot], an archive of WBAI radio station
- [Howl Festival]
- [Tompkins Square Dog Run : First Run]
- [Stranger to The System: Life Portraits of a New York City Homeless Community, webpage for a documentary chronicling the lives of twenty people living in Tompkins Square]
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