Washington Square Park
Public square anchored by a triumphal arch, once a potter's field for the city's forgotten dead.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Washington Square Park centers on a January night in 1917, when six artists including Gertrude Drick, John Sloan and Marcel Duchamp found the arch's hidden door unguarded and climbed to its roof with lanterns, liquor and a declaration. It follows what they read aloud from the top of the arch and how word of it spread through the neighborhood by morning. You'll also hear what lies buried beneath the square itself, from the decades it served a very different purpose.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Madison Square Park
Leafy public square with rotating art installations, a dog run, and views of the Flatiron Building.
Greenwich Village
Bohemian enclave of leafy streets, jazz clubs, and decades of countercultural art and protest.
Central Park
Vast urban park with meadows, lakes, wooded paths, and a zoo, ringed on all sides by city towers.
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Vast meadow park built over former ash dumps, crowned by the world's largest freestanding globe.
SoHo
Cast-iron district that went from garment factories to artists' lofts to luxury boutiques.
St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery
Fieldstone Georgian church consecrated in 1799 and home to the Poetry Project and Danspace.