Is Washington Square Park Built on a Graveyard? A Potter's Field, a Parade Ground and an Arch

By Solomon Rokowsky

Yes, in part. The eastern two-thirds of Washington Square Park was a public burial ground, a potter's field, from 1797 to 1825, and archaeologists who worked during the park's twenty-first century reconstruction found intact burials that are still there. The park has also been a marsh, a set of farm plots, a militia parade ground and a stage for protest and street music. Its marble arch is the best-known piece of it, but the ground under the lawns and paths is older and stranger than the arch.

The Washington Square Arch from the north. Photograph by Marco Almbauer, via Wikimedia Commons. CC0.

What was here before the park?

NYC Parks' historical sign text says the land was once a marsh fed by Minetta Creek, a water source for the Lenape village of Sapokanikan in today's West Village. The trail from that village to its inland planting fields later became the park's northern boundary.

After New Amsterdam was founded, the Dutch West India Company granted farm plots to settlers. In the 1640s the colony's director, Willem Kieft, began granting freedom to people the Company had enslaved, and the area became known as the Land of the Blacks. In 1645 Anthony Portuguese received a land grant, followed by Manuel Trumpeter, and the two farmed much of what is now the park. NYC Parks says that when the English took over in 1664 they withdrew the Black population's rights, and that by 1716 all of that property had been claimed by white landowners. The city's archaeology office says the area was farmed by people of African ancestry in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and that in the later eighteenth century part of it was developed into an estate before the eastern two-thirds became a potter's field.

Why did the city bury people here?

A yellow fever epidemic gripped the city in the 1790s and filled the cemetery then located at today's Madison Square Park. In 1797 the Common Council bought a 90-lot parcel for a public burial ground. That parcel is the eastern two-thirds of the park. NYC Parks says the area around it was sparsely populated, except for a few wealthy residents who contested the new potter's field and lost.

The cemetery opened in 1797, and a year later almost 700 people had been buried there. It was a secular burial ground for people who died poor or alone, though the Common Council made exceptions for three congregations, the African Zion Methodist Episcopal Church, Pearl Street Church and Cedar Street Church, because of the hardship churches faced during epidemics. NYC Parks gives an estimate of about 20,000 burials. Interments ceased in 1825 as development grew around the site. Minetta Brook still ran through the ground, and NYC Parks says it made the soil settle unevenly, so from 1808 a decade-long effort filled and diverted the stream.

Are the burials still there?

Yes. When the city rebuilt the park, the Landmarks Preservation Commission oversaw archaeology. The commission's archaeology page says the first phase of testing, from January to May 2008, found intact burials from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and that they were protected in place. A second phase ran from October 2009 to March 2011, as part of the reconstruction, and again confirmed intact burials that were left in place. The artifacts that were recovered went to the NYC Archaeological Repository.

Joan Geismar, who wrote about the work for the Society for Historical Archaeology in 2018, says the park's earlier use as a potter's field was known to the Parks Department and to local history buffs. The open question was whether burials from the cemetery years, 1797 to 1825, remained under the surface. She writes that the seven-year renovation, which began with archaeology in 2005, confirmed that they did, assured protection of the remains left in place, and raised awareness that burials were an ongoing issue for the project. She also notes that the archaeology covered only the areas of planned work, not the park's whole potential sensitivity. So the honest answer to the question in the title is that burials are confirmed in the places that were tested, and that nobody has dug up the whole park.

Is the Hangman's Elm real?

The tree is real. The legend is shakier. NYC Parks says lore holds that the English elm at the park's northwest corner, said to be 300 years old, was used to hang American revolutionaries and prisoners after the war. Parks adds that only one hanging in the potter's field was ever documented, that of Rose Butler, a young Black woman convicted of arson, who lived from 1799 to 1818, was hanged at the gallows and buried a few yards from where she was executed. The Parks text does not say she was hanged from the elm. The age of the tree and the stories about it are lore, and the one documented hanging is the only one this article treats as fact.

The tree known as the Hangman's Elm. Photograph by David Shankbone, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.

How did a cemetery become a parade ground and then a park?

In 1825 the city bought land west of the burial ground that had belonged to the merchant William Ludlow. In 1826 the site was graded and became the Washington Military Parade Ground, where volunteer militia companies trained. NYC Parks notes that the city's Seventh Regiment would later be called on to quell the Astor Place Riot and the 1863 Draft Riots. In 1827 the city bought more parcels to enlarge the parade ground and declared that the property "ought forever thereafter to be and remain a public square."

Prominent families escaping the disease and congestion of downtown then moved in and built the Greek Revival houses that still line the square's north side. New York University bought property on the east side and drew scholars to the area. In 1838 the park hosted the first public demonstration of the telegraph by Samuel F. B. Morse, an NYU professor. Paths were added in the middle of the nineteenth century, and in 1871 the park was redesigned by M. A. Kellogg and Ignatz Pilat. Their plan was more informal, with curving paths around the edges, and it added a carriage drive through the middle from Fifth Avenue toward Lower Manhattan, which forced the fountain to move. A couple of years later the fountain was replaced with the one that stands today, which had originally been at Fifth Avenue and East 59th Street. In 1878 the park was formally named Washington Square Park, after George Washington.

The Greek Revival row on Washington Square North. Photograph by Beyond My Ken, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who built the Washington Square Arch?

The arch honors George Washington and was part of the City Beautiful movement, which wanted American civic structures to rival those of European capitals, according to NYC Parks. A temporary arch of wood and plaster went up in 1889 north of the park for a citywide celebration of the centennial of Washington's inauguration in New York. It was so popular that a citizens committee raised money for a permanent one.

A photograph from about 1889 of the first, temporary arch, listed on Wikimedia Commons as Erster Washington Bogen. Photographer unknown, Zeno Fotografie scan. Public domain.

Stanford White designed the permanent arch, built mainly of Tuckahoe marble. Foundations were laid in May 1890 by David H. King Jr., the builder of the Statue of Liberty's pedestal, and the cornerstone, which hides a copper time capsule, was laid on Decoration Day, May 30, 1890. NYC Parks' two pages give two dates because they describe two events: its park history says the marble arch was built between 1890 and 1892, and its monument page says it was dedicated on May 4, 1895. The dedication had been planned for April 30 to match the anniversary of Washington's inauguration, but torrential rain postponed it.

The eagles on the north and south keystones are by Philip Martiny, and the spandrel figures representing Peace, War, Fame and Prosperity are by Frederick MacMonnies. The two statues of Washington on the north face came later. Hermon Atkins MacNeil's Washington as Commander-in-Chief, with Fame and Valor, was installed in 1916, and Alexander Stirling Calder's Washington as President, with Wisdom and Justice, followed in 1918. The Piccirilli Brothers, a family of master carvers with a studio in the Bronx, carved the main sculpture and ornament. A line from Washington's speech to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 is cut into the south parapet: "Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hands of God."

A stereograph of the Washington Arch from about 1900, from the New York Public Library collection, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

What happened to the arch and the park in the twentieth century?

For more than 65 years traffic ran through and around the arch. NYC Parks says pollution and acid rain wore down the marble, an ill-advised cleaning contract in 1966 damaged the main statues, and water undermined the structure, so it was fenced off for years. It was rededicated in 2004 after a city restoration.

The park itself became a gathering place. After the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, labor unions marched here. Artists of the Ashcan School such as John Sloan painted in it, and later the Beat Generation of the 1940s and 1950s and the folk musicians of the late 1950s and early 1960s made it their haven. While Fifth Avenue still ran through the arch, an even larger highway was proposed through the park. NYC Parks says the park closed to traffic in the early 1960s at the insistence of Greenwich Village residents including Jane Jacobs and Shirley Hayes. About a decade later the fountain was lowered and a two-tiered central plaza was built, and chess and gaming tables at the south and northwest entrances built the park's reputation among chess players. Starting in 2003 the arch was restored and the park redesigned. The fountain was raised and moved east to align with the arch and Fifth Avenue, the Garibaldi monument was relocated, green space grew, and a new park house with restrooms was added.

Who runs Washington Square Park today?

NYC Parks runs it. The department lists it as a neighborhood park, park ID M098, of 9.75 acres, with dog-friendly areas, playgrounds, public restrooms, spray showers and Wi-Fi hot spots among its facilities. Its monuments include the Alexander Lyman Holley bust, the Garibaldi statue and the two Washington statues at the arch.

Where can you eat or drink at Washington Square Park?

NYC Parks' eatery page for the park lists two spots. One is NY Dosas, on the north side of Washington Square at Sullivan Street, with the phone number (917) 710-2092. The other is a Washington Square Park food cart near the fountain. The Parks page gives no hours or menus for either, so confirm before you plan a meal around them.

Outside the park, Caffe Reggio describes itself on its own location page as sitting in the heart of historic Greenwich Village, steps from Washington Square Park, with sidewalk seating. I could not verify current hours for it or for other nearby restaurants from an official source, so this article lists only the places named above. Listings and hours here were read on the official pages on October 19, 2026.

Sources

• NYC Parks, Washington Square Park Highlights (Historical Signs Project text)
• NYC Parks, Washington Square Arch monument page
• NYC Parks, Washington Square Park main page
• NYC Parks, Washington Square Park Eateries
• NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, Archaeological Repository: Washington Square Park
• Joan H. Geismar, First a Burial Ground, then a Parade Ground, then a Park, then a Revelation (Society for Historical Archaeology, 2018)
• Caffe Reggio, Location page