Stuyvesant Square

The Stuyvesant Square is a park in New York's Gramercy Park of the Borough of Manhattan. The park is well maintained and managed by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

Location

The Stuyvesant Square is located between 15th Street and 17th Street and Rutherford Place and Nathan D. Perlman Place. The Second Avenue divides the park into an eastern and a western half.

Environment

Is the hospital Beth Israel Medical Center, which was built on the property, where previously the composer Antonín Dvořák in 1893 lived on the eastern side of the park. A statue of Antonín Dvořák by Ivan Mestrovic was to honor here set it up. In addition, located on Stuyvesant Square, the Friends Meeting House and Seminary, St. George's Episcopal Church, where once JP Morgan attended services. Nearby is located on 15th Street, the old Stuyvesant High School building.

History

1836 was Peter Gerard Stuyvesant ( 1778-1847 ), the great-grandson of Peter Stuyvesant (now commonly referred to as Peter Stuyvesant ), with his wife Helen Rutherford an area of ​​nearly 1.6 acres of the Stuyvesant farm for symbolic five U.S. dollars, the City of New York the reason for a public park, which originally was to be called Holland Square.

A lawsuit from Stuyvesant in 1839 drove the construction of the public park ahead (not more exist), the recently created Washington Square Park and the private Gramercy Park should serve as green space in an area along with St. John's Square, from the it was assumed that this would result in an upscale neighborhood. But the city only in 1847 began to create the park, where they had built a magnificent cast-iron fence that still stands today and is the second oldest cast iron fence New York Citys. 1850 included two wells from the design of the park and the park was formally opened to the public.

In the early years of the 20th century, the Stuyvesant Park was one of the most prestigious addresses in the city. In Stuyvesant Building (17 Livingston Place) at the eastern end of the square lived outstanding personalities as the publisher George Putnam, editor of Harper 's Bazaar Elizabeth Jordan and Elizabeth Custer, General George Armstrong Custer 's widow.

The consecration of St. George 's Church, which is located at the corner of 16th Street and Rutherford Place and the opening of the Friends Meeting House and Seminary on the southwestern part of the park, the area evaluated in addition to.

The first house in this neighborhood was built from 1842 to 1843. 1858 pulled the hospital, " New York Infirmary for Women and Children " (today: New York Downtown Hospital), founded by Elizabeth Blackwell and was previously in the 7th Street near today's Tompkins Square Park, at the Stuyvesant Square ( 321 East 15th Street). Today, apartments are in this building, after the hospital had to move again. By the end of the 19th century, Stuyvesant Square kept its elegant prestige, mainly because of the doctors working in the hospitals that lined Stuyvesant Square.

Like many other urban parks has since undergone extensive renovation work and the Stuyvesant Square. In the 1930s, the park was by landscape architect by Parks Commissioner Robert Moses - Gilmore D. Clarke - changed by toilets, playgrounds and other amenities were added. The park was reopened in 1937. In the 1980s, the two wells and the cast-iron fence were renovated. In addition, the cobbled bluestone was re-laid in two ellipses. During the process, the lawns, flower beds and shrubs were replaced. Some old trees, English elms and stone Linden, continue to thrive.

Further enrichment of the park is the sculpture of Peter Stuyvesant by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1941 ) and the statue of Antonín Dvořák by Ivan Mestrovic in 1963, which was placed in the park in 1997.

The park and its immediate surroundings have been declared a Historic District in 1975 and are thus protected monument.