Washington Market Park is an

urban 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 r ...

located in the

TriBeCa Tribeca (), originally written as TriBeCa, is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. Its name is a syllabic abbreviation of "Triangle Below Canal Street". The "triangle" (more accurately a quadrilateral) is bounded by Canal Stree ...

neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. The park, which is bounded by

Greenwich Greenwich ( , ,) is a town in south-east London, England, within the ceremonial county of Greater London. It is situated east-southeast of Charing Cross. Greenwich is notable for its maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich ...

Chambers Chambers may refer to: Places Canada: *Chambers Township, Ontario United States: *Chambers County, Alabama * Chambers, Arizona, an unincorporated community in Apache County * Chambers, Nebraska * Chambers, West Virginia * Chambers Township, Hol ...

, and

West West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...

Streets, covers . The park also has

community garden A community garden is a piece of land gardened or cultivated by a group of people individually or collectively. Normally in community gardens, the land is divided into individual plots. Each individual gardener is responsible for their own plo ...

s and a large playground and hosts many community events.

History

The city of New York proposed the construction of a municipal parking lot on a disused dump site located just south of the Independence Plaza apartments in the late 1970s. Residents of TriBeCa, including former New York City councilwoman Kathryn E. Freed, protested the planned parking lot and campaigned for a new city park in their neighborhood. At the time, the tiny, triangular Duane Park was one of the few green spaces in TriBeCa. The activists successfully persuaded officials to build a park, which was called Washington Market Park, instead of the parking lot. In the late 1970s, a federally-funded Community Block Development Grant was obtained from the city and used to design and build the existing park. Lee Weintraub, then an architect with the city's Housing and Development Administration (HDA), was assigned to design the park. A not-for-profit corporation, Washington Market Community Park, Inc, was created in 1978 to oversee the park, to be run by a Board of Directors elected by the community. Washington Market Park opened in April 1983. It is named for the former Washington Market, which functioned as New York City's most important

wholesale Wholesaling or distributing is the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers; to industrial, commercial, institutional or other professional business users; or to other wholesalers (wholesale businesses) and related subordinated services. In ...

produce Produce is a generalized term for many farm-produced crops, including fruits and vegetables (grains, oats, etc. are also sometimes considered ''produce''). More specifically, the term ''produce'' often implies that the products are fresh and g ...

market, reaching its peak between 1880 and 1910. New York City tore down the nearby, former Washington Market buildings in the 1960s when the wholesale produce industry relocated to Hunts Point in the

Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

. In 2003, Mayor Michael Bloomberg included Washington Market Park as one of twelve parks in Lower Manhattan which received a combined $25 million in upgrades from the

Lower Manhattan Development Corporation The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation was formed in November 2001, following the September 11 attacks, to plan the reconstruction of Lower Manhattan and distribute nearly $10 billion in federal funds aimed at rebuilding downtown Manhattan. ...

References

External links

The Friends of Washington Market Park
* ttp://www.washingtonmarketpark.org/ Friends of Washington Market Parkbr>The Tribeca Trib: "From Dump to Jewel: How Washington Market Park Took Root in Tribeca"
{{Tribeca, Manhattan Parks in Manhattan Tribeca