Elizabeth H. Berger Plaza is a

public park An urban park or metropolitan park, also known as a municipal park (North America) or a public park, public open space, or municipal gardens ( UK), is a park in cities and other incorporated places that offer recreation and green space to re ...

in the

Financial District A financial district is usually a central area in a city where financial services firms such as banks, insurance companies and other related finance corporations have their head offices. In major cities, financial districts are often home to s ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. formed by the triangular junction of

Trinity Place Church Street and Trinity Place form a single north–south roadway in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Its northern end is at Canal Street and its southern end is at Morris Street, where Trinity Place merges with Greenwich Street. The dividing ...

Greenwich Street Greenwich Street is a north–south street in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Manhattan. It extends from the intersection of Ninth Avenue (Manhattan), Ninth Avenue and Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District, Manhat ...

and Edgar Street. It faces the Manhattan exit ramp from the

Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel The Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel, officially the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel and commonly referred to as the Battery Tunnel or Battery Park Tunnel, is a tolled tunnel in New York City that connects Red Hook in Brooklyn with the Battery in Manhattan ...

. Formerly known as the Edgar Street Greenstreet, this park honors civic advocate Elizabeth H. Berger (1960-2013). In her role as president of the Downtown Alliance, she advocated for the fusion of two traffic triangles at this location into an expanded park. The park is located on the site of a former neighborhood known as

Little Syria Little Syria ( ar, سوريا الصغيرة) was a diverse neighborhood that existed in the New York City borough of Manhattan from the late 1880s until the 1940s., pp.76-77; Two other sections of New York were singled out as particularly Syrian i ...

, a bustling immigrant community displaced by the construction of the tunnel in 1953.

Shoreline

At the north side of this park is Edgar Street, reputedly the shortest street in Manhattan. Its gentle downward slope, also visible in the surrounding east/west streets, is the vestige of a ridge or bluff that ran parallel with the shoreline and crested at about Broadway, where Trinity Church is sited. It was a narrow street in its early days, no more than eighteen feet wide, called ‘Tuyn Paat’ or ‘Garden Alley’ in the Dutch period (1624 -1664). When the British took control of the colony in 1664, the street name was changed with characteristic indifference to Tin Pot Alley. The City acquired the street in 1795, at which time its current name was affixed. Edgar likely refers to the family of William Edgar (1736-1820), a merchant from Detroit who came to New York circa 1780 and established a successful shipping business, with links to India and China. For a time, the street served as a thoroughfare or driveway leading to the Edgar family household located nearby. Until the western shoreline was filled in, this street ran to or very near the water’s edge. The

Robert and Anne Dickey House The Robert and Anne Dickey House, also referred to as the Robert Dickey House or by its address 67 Greenwich Street, is a Federal-style building in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. The site is bounded by Edgar Street ...

, located across Edgar Street from Elizabeth H. Berger Plaza, is the only structure remaining on Edgar Street. The line of Greenwich Street was the approximate original coastline of Manhattan Island. In 1787, the Common Council acted on a pre-war proposal to expand the shoreline sixty feet into the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...

. Then began the construction of Greenwich Street, which soon hosted a row of Federal-style townhouses. Washington Street followed in approximately 1808 and West Street by 1830. The drop in grade from Broadway to Greenwich Street abruptly evens out where the landfill begins.

Renaming and renovation

In October 2013, members of the Washington Street Historical Society, including Americans of Lebanese and

Syrian Syrians ( ar, سُورِيُّون, ''Sūriyyīn'') are an Eastern Mediterranean ethnic group indigenous to the Levant. They share common Levantine Semitic roots. The cultural and linguistic heritage of the Syrian people is a blend of both indi ...

descent, dedicated bench plaques inscribed with the names and quotes of individuals and groups that represent Arab-American culture. Edgar Street Plaza was renamed after Berger on December 16, 2013. With sculptural junipers along the benches, a small piazza surrounds a central planting area with oak leaf hydrangeas, viburnums and river birch trees, shielding park goers from traffic in an expanded green space. In 2017 it was announced that the plaza would be combined with Trinity Plaza to the south and rebuilt into a park with tributes to Little Syria. The direct off-ramp from the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel to Greenwich Street would be eliminated. As of April 2019, however, the park was delayed by several months due to the construction of a new school at 77 Greenwich Street, inside the former Dickey House. Construction is set to be complete by 2021.

References

{{Financial District, Manhattan Parks in Manhattan Financial District, Manhattan Arab-American culture in New York City Lebanese-American culture in New York (state) Syrian-American culture in New York City