Washington Square: The Arch and the Elm

Why is it significant?

Stand right here before the towering white marble of the Washington Square Arch, framed against the vibrant energy of buskers, chess players, and Village strollers.

Key Facts

Listen · 2:33

Stand right here before the towering white marble of the Washington Square Arch, framed against the vibrant energy of buskers, chess players, and Village strollers. This grand seventy-seven-foot arch was designed by legendary architect Stanford White in eighteen ninety-two, replacing a temporary plaster arch erected to celebrate the centennial of George Washington's inauguration as president. The Roman triumphal design is carved from native Tuckahoe marble and features two statues of Washington on its north pillars, one as commander in chief and the other as president. But the festive elegance beneath your feet hides a dark, tragic past. Before this was a playground for artists and intellectuals, this entire nine-acre park was a potter's field from seventeen ninety-seven to eighteen twenty-five. More than twenty thousand paupers, prisoners, and victims of yellow fever epidemics were buried right here in shallow, unmarked trenches. Whenever municipal workers dig into the soil for fountain repairs or tree plantings, they still occasionally uncover human bones. Walk over toward the northwest corner of the park and you will see a massive English elm towering over seventy feet high. Known as Hangman's Elm, this ancient tree is over three hundred years old, making it the oldest living organism in Manhattan. Urban legend claims Revolutionary War traitors were hanged from its boughs. While that is likely myth, city records confirm that on July twenty-first, eighteen twenty, an enslaved nineteen-year-old woman named Rose Butler was executed nearby on a gallows after being convicted of arson. In January nineteen seventeen, the park witnessed a delightfully absurd revolution. Artist Marcel Duchamp, painter John Sloan, and poet Gertrude Drick slipped through an unlocked iron door inside the base of the marble arch. They climbed up the spiral staircase to the roof, brought Chinese lanterns, red balloons, and hot dogs, fired cap pistols into the night air, and declared Greenwich Village an independent, sovereign bohemian republic! That eccentric, defiant spirit has defined Washington Square ever since.