Stuyvesant Square
Encyclopedia
__notoc__
Stuyvesant Square is a park in the New York City
borough
of Manhattan
, located between 15th Street and 17th Street
and Rutherford Place and Nathan D. Perlman Place, formerly Livingston Place. Second Avenue
divides the park into two halves, east and west, and each half is surrounded by the original cast-iron fence. The name is also used for the neighborhood around the park, roughly bounded by 14th
and 18th Streets and First
and Third
Avenues.
Directly around the square are the Friends Meeting House and Seminary
and St. George's Episcopal Church
– once attended by J.P. Morgan – both on Rutherford Place. On the eastern side is Beth Israel Medical Center
– part of which, the Robert Mapplethorpe
Residential Treatment Facility for AIDS patients, was built on the site of Bohemia
n composer Antonín Dvořák
's 1893 home at 327 East 17th Street
. Nearby, within the neighborhood, is the old Stuyvesant High School
building, still in educational use as the "Old Stuyvesant Campus".
The square and its immediate environs were designated the Stuyvesant Square Historic District in 1975. The Friends Meeting House, St. George's and Stuyvesant High School are all New York City landmarks, designated in 1967, 1969 and 1997, respectively, as are the three Italianate
brick row houses with deep front yards and cast iron verandas at 326, 328 and 330 East 18th Street, built in 1852-1853 at the instigation of Cornelia Stuyvesant Ten Broeck.
– and his wife Hellen Rutherford reserved four acres of the Stuyvesant farm and sold it for a token five dollars to the City of New York as a public park, originally to be called Holland Square, with the proviso that the City of New York build a fence around it. As time passed, however, no fence was constructed, and in 1839, Stuyvesant's family sued the City to cause it to enclose the land. Not until 1847 did the City begin to improve the park by erecting the magnificent cast-iron fence, which still stands as the second oldest in New York City. In 1850 two fountains completed the landscaping, and the park was formally opened to the public. The public space joined St. John's Square (no longer extant), the recently-formed Washington Square
and the private Gramercy Park
as residential squares around which it was expected New York's better neighborhoods would be built.
In the early 1900s, Stuyvesant Square was among the city's most fashionable addresses. The Stuyvesant Building, at 17 Livingston Place on the eastern edge of the Square, was home to such luminaries as publisher George Putnam
, Harper's Bazaar
editor Elizabeth Jordan
and Elizabeth Custer, the widow of General George Armstrong Custer
.
The opening of St. George’s Church
, located on Rutherford Place and 16th Street (built on land obtained from Peter Stuyvesant, 1848–1856; burnt down in 1865; remodeled by C.O.Blesch and L. Eidlitz
, 1897) and the Friends Meeting House and Seminary (to the southwest) (1861, Charles Bunting) attracted more residents to the area around the park. The earliest existing houses in the district, in the Greek Revival style
, date to 1842-43, when the city's residential development was first moving north of 14th Street
, but the major growth in the area occurred in the 1850s. Fashionable houses were still being built as late as 1883, when Richard Morris Hunt
's Sidney Webster House at 245 East 17th Street
– now the East End Temple synagogue – was completed, but already German and Irish immigrants, had began moving into new rowhouses and brownstones in the neighborhood, followed by Jewish, Italian and Slavic
immigrants.
Other than Beth Israel, other hospitals were located in the neighbhorhood as well. The New York Infirmary for Women and Children was founded at 321 East 15th Street by the pioneering woman physician, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell
. The New York Lying-In Hospital on Second Avenue at 17th Street, is now condominiums, but the Hospital for Joint Diseases, a unit of NYU Medical Center is located across the avenue. Other now non-extistent hospitals included the Salvation Army
's William Booth memorial Hospital, Manhattan General and St. Andrew's Convalescent Hospital. Because of the number of hospitals in the district, there were many doctor's offices on the sidestreets, along with quack "doctors" and midwives who preyed on the area's immigrant population.
' landscape architect Gilmore D. Clarke
, with the addition of comfort station
s, playgrounds and other built amenities. The park reopened in 1937; the 1980s saw restorations of the two 1884 fountains, the preservation of the cast iron fence, and relaying the original bluestone sidewalks in two ellipses, with renovated lawns, shrubs and flower beds. A few old trees, English elm
and Little-leaf linden
, still flourish. Further contributions to the park have included Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
's Peter Stuyvesant (1941) and Ivan Mestorvic’s Antonín Dvořák (1963, moved here 1997).
The park is operated and maintained by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation
.
Stuyvesant Square is a park in the New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
borough
Borough (New York City)
New York City, one of the largest cities in the world, is composed of five boroughs. Each borough now has the same boundaries as the county it is in. County governments were dissolved when the city consolidated in 1898, along with all city, town, and village governments within each county...
of Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, located between 15th Street and 17th Street
17th Street (Manhattan)
17th Street is an east-west running street between First Avenue and Eleventh Avenue in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. Traffic runs one way along the street, from east to west excepting the stretch between Broadway and Park Avenue South, where traffic runs in both directions.17th Street...
and Rutherford Place and Nathan D. Perlman Place, formerly Livingston Place. Second Avenue
Second Avenue (Manhattan)
Second Avenue is an avenue on the East Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan extending from Houston Street at its south end to the Harlem River Drive at 128th Street at its north end. A one-way street, vehicular traffic runs only downtown. A bicycle lane in the left hand portion from 55th...
divides the park into two halves, east and west, and each half is surrounded by the original cast-iron fence. The name is also used for the neighborhood around the park, roughly bounded by 14th
14th Street (Manhattan)
14th Street is a major crosstown street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The street rivals the size of some of the well-known avenues of the city and is an important business location....
and 18th Streets and First
First Avenue (Manhattan)
First Avenue is a north-south thoroughfare on the East Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan, running from Houston Street northbound for over 125 blocks before terminating at the Willis Avenue Bridge into The Bronx at the Harlem River near East 127th Street. South of Houston Street, the...
and Third
Third Avenue (Manhattan)
Third Avenue is a north-south thoroughfare on the East Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan, running from Cooper Square north for over 120 blocks. Third Avenue continues into The Bronx across the Harlem River over the Third Avenue Bridge north of East 129th Street to East Fordham Road at...
Avenues.
Directly around the square are the Friends Meeting House and Seminary
Friends Seminary
Friends Seminary is an elite private day school in Manhattan. It is owned and controlled by the New York Quarterly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. The school, the oldest continuous coeducational school in New York City, serves 694 college-bound day students in Kindergarten through...
and St. George's Episcopal Church
St. George's Episcopal Church (Manhattan)
St. George's Episcopal Church is a historic church located at 209 East 16th Street at Rutherford Place, on Stuyvesant Square in Manhattan, New York City. Called "one of the first and most significant examples of Early Romanesque Revival church architecture in America", the church exterior was...
– once attended by J.P. Morgan – both on Rutherford Place. On the eastern side is Beth Israel Medical Center
Beth Israel Medical Center
Beth Israel Medical Center is a 1,368-bed, full-service tertiary teaching hospital in New York City. Originally dedicated to serving immigrant Jews living in the tenement slums of the Lower East Side, it was founded at the turn of the 20th century. The main hospital location is the Petrie...
– part of which, the Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, known for his large-scale, highly stylized black and white portraits, photos of flowers and nude men...
Residential Treatment Facility for AIDS patients, was built on the site of Bohemia
Bohemia
Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...
n composer Antonín Dvořák
Antonín Dvorák
Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...
's 1893 home at 327 East 17th Street
17th Street (Manhattan)
17th Street is an east-west running street between First Avenue and Eleventh Avenue in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. Traffic runs one way along the street, from east to west excepting the stretch between Broadway and Park Avenue South, where traffic runs in both directions.17th Street...
. Nearby, within the neighborhood, is the old Stuyvesant High School
Stuyvesant High School
Stuyvesant High School , commonly referred to as Stuy , is a New York City public high school that specializes in mathematics and science. The school opened in 1904 on Manhattan's East Side and moved to a new building in Battery Park City in 1992. Stuyvesant is noted for its strong academic...
building, still in educational use as the "Old Stuyvesant Campus".
The square and its immediate environs were designated the Stuyvesant Square Historic District in 1975. The Friends Meeting House, St. George's and Stuyvesant High School are all New York City landmarks, designated in 1967, 1969 and 1997, respectively, as are the three Italianate
Italianate architecture
The Italianate style of architecture was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. In the Italianate style, the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian Renaissance architecture, which had served as inspiration for both Palladianism and...
brick row houses with deep front yards and cast iron verandas at 326, 328 and 330 East 18th Street, built in 1852-1853 at the instigation of Cornelia Stuyvesant Ten Broeck.
History
In 1836, Peter Gerard Stuyvesant (1778–1847) – the great-great-grandson of Peter StuyvesantPeter Stuyvesant
Peter Stuyvesant , served as the last Dutch Director-General of the colony of New Netherland from 1647 until it was ceded provisionally to the English in 1664, after which it was renamed New York...
– and his wife Hellen Rutherford reserved four acres of the Stuyvesant farm and sold it for a token five dollars to the City of New York as a public park, originally to be called Holland Square, with the proviso that the City of New York build a fence around it. As time passed, however, no fence was constructed, and in 1839, Stuyvesant's family sued the City to cause it to enclose the land. Not until 1847 did the City begin to improve the park by erecting the magnificent cast-iron fence, which still stands as the second oldest in New York City. In 1850 two fountains completed the landscaping, and the park was formally opened to the public. The public space joined St. John's Square (no longer extant), the recently-formed Washington Square
Washington Square Park
Washington Square Park is one of the best-known of New York City's 1,900 public parks. At 9.75 acres , it is a landmark in the Manhattan neighborhood of Greenwich Village, as well as a meeting place and center for cultural activity...
and the private Gramercy Park
Gramercy Park
Gramercy Park is a small, fenced-in private park in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park is at the core of both the neighborhood referred to as either Gramercy or Gramercy Park and the Gramercy Park Historic District...
as residential squares around which it was expected New York's better neighborhoods would be built.
In the early 1900s, Stuyvesant Square was among the city's most fashionable addresses. The Stuyvesant Building, at 17 Livingston Place on the eastern edge of the Square, was home to such luminaries as publisher George Putnam
George Putnam
George Putnam may refer to:*George Putnam , Los Angeles, California, television newsman*George D. Putnam , screenwriter*George F. Putnam, American historian...
, Harper's Bazaar
Harper's Bazaar
Harper’s Bazaar is an American fashion magazine, first published in 1867. Harper’s Bazaar is published by Hearst and, as a magazine, considers itself to be the style resource for “women who are the first to buy the best, from casual to couture.”...
editor Elizabeth Jordan
Elizabeth Jordan
Elizabeth Jordan was Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for its May 1968 issue. Her centerfold was photographed by Mario Casilli....
and Elizabeth Custer, the widow of General George Armstrong Custer
George Armstrong Custer
George Armstrong Custer was a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the Indian Wars. Raised in Michigan and Ohio, Custer was admitted to West Point in 1858, where he graduated last in his class...
.
The opening of St. George’s Church
St. George's Episcopal Church (Manhattan)
St. George's Episcopal Church is a historic church located at 209 East 16th Street at Rutherford Place, on Stuyvesant Square in Manhattan, New York City. Called "one of the first and most significant examples of Early Romanesque Revival church architecture in America", the church exterior was...
, located on Rutherford Place and 16th Street (built on land obtained from Peter Stuyvesant, 1848–1856; burnt down in 1865; remodeled by C.O.Blesch and L. Eidlitz
Leopold Eidlitz
Leopold Eidlitz was a prominent New York architect best known for his work on the New York State Capitol , as well as "Iranistan" , P. T. Barnum's house in Bridgeport, Connecticut; St. Peter's Church, on Westchester Avenue at St...
, 1897) and the Friends Meeting House and Seminary (to the southwest) (1861, Charles Bunting) attracted more residents to the area around the park. The earliest existing houses in the district, in the Greek Revival style
Greek Revival architecture
The Greek Revival was an architectural movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in Northern Europe and the United States. A product of Hellenism, it may be looked upon as the last phase in the development of Neoclassical architecture...
, date to 1842-43, when the city's residential development was first moving north of 14th Street
14th Street (Manhattan)
14th Street is a major crosstown street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The street rivals the size of some of the well-known avenues of the city and is an important business location....
, but the major growth in the area occurred in the 1850s. Fashionable houses were still being built as late as 1883, when Richard Morris Hunt
Richard Morris Hunt
Richard Morris Hunt was an American architect of the nineteenth century and a preeminent figure in the history of American architecture...
's Sidney Webster House at 245 East 17th Street
17th Street (Manhattan)
17th Street is an east-west running street between First Avenue and Eleventh Avenue in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. Traffic runs one way along the street, from east to west excepting the stretch between Broadway and Park Avenue South, where traffic runs in both directions.17th Street...
– now the East End Temple synagogue – was completed, but already German and Irish immigrants, had began moving into new rowhouses and brownstones in the neighborhood, followed by Jewish, Italian and Slavic
Slavic peoples
The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...
immigrants.
Other than Beth Israel, other hospitals were located in the neighbhorhood as well. The New York Infirmary for Women and Children was founded at 321 East 15th Street by the pioneering woman physician, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell
Elizabeth Blackwell
Elizabeth Blackwell was the first female doctor in the United States and the first on the UK Medical Register...
. The New York Lying-In Hospital on Second Avenue at 17th Street, is now condominiums, but the Hospital for Joint Diseases, a unit of NYU Medical Center is located across the avenue. Other now non-extistent hospitals included the Salvation Army
Salvation Army
The Salvation Army is a Protestant Christian church known for its thrift stores and charity work. It is an international movement that currently works in over a hundred countries....
's William Booth memorial Hospital, Manhattan General and St. Andrew's Convalescent Hospital. Because of the number of hospitals in the district, there were many doctor's offices on the sidestreets, along with quack "doctors" and midwives who preyed on the area's immigrant population.
The park
Stuyvesant Square, like many other city parks, was extensively rehabilitated in a more populist manner during the 1930s, when the 19th-century plan was modified by Parks Commissioner Robert MosesRobert Moses
Robert Moses was the "master builder" of mid-20th century New York City, Long Island, Rockland County, and Westchester County, New York. As the shaper of a modern city, he is sometimes compared to Baron Haussmann of Second Empire Paris, and is one of the most polarizing figures in the history of...
' landscape architect Gilmore D. Clarke
Gilmore David Clarke
Gilmore David Clarke was an American civil engineer and landscape architect who designed many parks and public spaces in New York City....
, with the addition of comfort station
Comfort station
Comfort station may refer to:* Comfort station , Public Toilet* Comfort station , Brothel as used in the article Comfort women* the National Register of Historic Places listed Comfort Station in Milton, Massachusetts...
s, playgrounds and other built amenities. The park reopened in 1937; the 1980s saw restorations of the two 1884 fountains, the preservation of the cast iron fence, and relaying the original bluestone sidewalks in two ellipses, with renovated lawns, shrubs and flower beds. A few old trees, English elm
English Elm
Ulmus procera Salisb., the English, Common, or more lately Atinian, Elm was, before the advent of Dutch elm disease, one of the largest and fastest-growing deciduous trees in Europe...
and Little-leaf linden
Tilia cordata
Tilia cordata is a species of Tilia native to much of Europe and western Asia, north to southern Great Britain , central Scandinavia, east to central Russia, and south to central Spain, Italy, Bulgaria, Turkey, and the Caucasus; in the south of its range it is restricted to...
, still flourish. Further contributions to the park have included Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was an American sculptor, art patron and collector, and founder in 1931 of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City...
's Peter Stuyvesant (1941) and Ivan Mestorvic’s Antonín Dvořák (1963, moved here 1997).
The park is operated and maintained by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation
New York City Department of Parks and Recreation
The City of New York Department of Parks & Recreation is the department of government of the City of New York responsible for maintaining the city's parks system, preserving and maintaining the ecological diversity of the city's natural areas, and furnishing recreational opportunities for city's...
.
See also
- Gramercy ParkGramercy ParkGramercy Park is a small, fenced-in private park in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park is at the core of both the neighborhood referred to as either Gramercy or Gramercy Park and the Gramercy Park Historic District...
- East 17th Street/Irving Place Historic DistrictEast 17th Street/Irving Place Historic DistrictThe East 17th Street/Irving Place Historic District is a small historic district located primarily on East 17th Street between Union Square East and Irving Place in the Union Square neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City...
- East Village, ManhattanEast Village, ManhattanThe East Village is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, lying east of Greenwich Village, south of Gramercy and Stuyvesant Town, and north of the Lower East Side...
- Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village