St. John's Park
St. John's Park was a 19th-century park and square, and the neighborhood of
The land was part of a plantation owned by an early settler to
Early history
The land on which the square sits was originally part of Lispernard Meadows,
When Jans died in 1663, her will stipulated that the land should be liquidated, with the proceeds going to the children from her first marriage. The heirs sold the property in March 1670 to Francis Lovelace, the Royal Governor of the colony, but he lost it when the Dutch reclaimed New Amsterdam in 1672. England recaptured the territory in 1674, and New York governor Edmund Andros claimed the land for the Duke of York.[9] The parcel was leased to various parties for the next quarter of a century.
Development by Trinity Church
In 1700, the land was leased to
Trinity's development concept was to create an elite square of residences similar to those in the
It took over 20 years for all the lots to be sold and developed, partly because of the swampy topography, but also because the church was only offering 99-year leases, not outright ownership of the lots, with covenants which limited the heights of residences and the materials they were built with.[12][10] During this period, St. John's Chapel had very few parishioners.[15] The 64 lots were eventually sold when Trinity changed its policy and decided to sell lots outright, deeding the exclusive use of the square to the lot owners.[17] The sales had the attached covenant that if the owners failed to properly keep up the square it would be given to the city for public use.[12]
The square and park began to attract upscale residents,
By 1827, the "ornate and elegant"[21] neighborhood had achieved a fashionable status, with residents from the "first families" of the city[6] such as Hamilton, Schulyer, Delafield, and Tappan,[17] as well as William Paulding, the mayor of New York City from 1924-26.[22] At around the same time the name "St. John's Park", after the church, had begun to be used instead of "Hudson Square".[12] The square's "polished elegance",[22] which was "in a class with Washington Square and Grancery Park"[16] only lasted a single generation,[22] from 1825-1850.[23] During this time, one observer called it "the fairest interior portion of the city",[17] and the Evening Post in 1847 called it "a spot of Eden lovliness .. It seems as if retiring from the din and tumult of the noisy town to enjoy its own secret solitude.[16]
Decline of the neighborhood
The decline of St. John's Park began in the late 1840s and early 1850s when many neighborhoods around it and nearby in Lower Manhattan lost their wealthy residents, who began to
Trinity had maintained the right to sell the land with the consent of two-thirds of the owners of the lots. As New York continued to develop, land in
The transfer to the railroad Company is not to be regretted. As a park it has never been available, save to the few who rented [sic] property nearby. The people now living there are tenants and wanderers, and there are very few property rights that can be damaged by the change. The establishment of a great freighting business there will pretty surely open up all the streets from Franklin to Canal for mercantile business, and add vastly to the wealth of the west side of the Ward ... And so, while we cannot repress a feeling of sorrow when we see the remorseless hand of Improvement sweeping down historical monuments, we find consolation in the fact that this particular improvement will be for the benefit of the City, and especially of the locality most nearly affected.[6]
Decades later, in 1918, the neighborhood received another blow when St. John's Chapel was torn down.[4]
Freight terminal
Immediately after acquiring the property, Vanderbilt put up a one-story train shed as a temporary measure
The fireproof terminal, which could accommodate 96 cars on 8 tracks and was an important shipping point for goods heading west, employed 30 office clerks, and as many as 300 laborers who dealt with up to 140 cars that might pass through in a week. There were two platforms for the transfer of goods, and the top two stories of the terminal were the Frederick C. Linde warehouse, for both general and cold storage. The terminal was well sited to handle dry goods and groceries from wholesale merchants in the surrounding area. The line of carts waiting to load or offload backed up West Broadway to Canal Street, and was present around the clock.[27]
The advent of the terminal transformed the lower West Side into a hodgepodge of "bonded and general storage warehouses",
The name "St. John's Freight Terminal"[35] was retained when the New York Central Railroad, successor to the Hudson River Railroad, built a new terminal at 550 Washington Street when it raised its tracks above street level[5] to alleviate the problem of the numerous accidents caused by the combination of trains, traffic and pedestrians. The new depot – which opened in 1934 – served as the terminus of the elevated High Line.[36]
Holland Tunnel exits
The 1867 train depot was razed in 1927, and was used as a truck yard before becoming the eastbound exits[note 2] of the Holland Tunnel, which carries Interstate 78.[2][4] The Holland Tunnel Exit Plaza,[10] located within the city block now owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ),[37] consists of a teardrop-shaped roadway. The roadway provides five exits from the tunnel, which sort traffic down a number of city streets.[38] The original structure had four exits, but the plaza was renovated – including landscaping by Studio V Architecture[39] and Ives Architecture Studio[2] – and a fifth exit added in 2004.[40][41] The inner portion of the plaza, inside the rotary, is still referred to as "St. John's Park"[4] and appears on Google Maps as such,[42] but the property is marked with "No Trespassing" signs[43] and the interior is thus not accessible to pedestrians.[4]
The interior was the site of St. John's Rotary Arc, a sculpture by Richard Serra, from 1980 to 1987,[44][45][46] and Joie de Vivre, a sculpture by Mark di Suvero,[47] between 1998 and 2006.[48]
In 2010, the AIA Guide to New York City called the interior space a "circular wasteland" and commented: "Our ancestors preserved many a New York treasure, but blew it here."[4]
References
Explanatory notes
- ^ "Meadows" here is used in the sense of "a low-lying piece of grassland, often boggy and near a river." "Meadow" on the Free Dictionary, citing Collins English Dictionary (2003)
- ^ The exits are:
- Exit 1: "West Street" (NY Route 9A) via Laight Street
- Exit 2: "Uptown" via Hudson Street
- Exit 3: "Brooklyn" via Walker Street and Canal Street to the Manhattan Bridge
- Exit 4: "Downtown" via Varick Street (added 2004)
- Exit 5: "Canal Street" east via Laight Street
- Exit 1:
Citations
- ^ Bradley, et al. (1992), p.12. Quote" An impressive park, first known as Hudson Square and later as St. John's Park, provided a suitable setting for the new church and, as a private enclave, prompted the development of a refined residential neighborhood surrounding it. (The location of the park corresponds to what is now the Holland Tunnel Exit Plaza.)"
- ^ a b c "Holland Tunnel Rotary" (PDF). Ives Architecture Studio. Archived from the original (PDF) on January 5, 2015. Retrieved January 3, 2015.
- ^ "20 Ericsson Place" and "20 Beach Street" on the New York City Geographic Information System map
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19538-386-7.
- ^ a b c d e Mattera, John. "Daily Plant: A Park of the Past" on the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation website (October 20, 2005)
- ^ a b c d e f g "St. John's Park" (PDF). The New York Times. March 9, 1867. p. 4. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
- ^ a b Zabriskie, George Olin (April 1973). Everitt, Rolland (ed.). "Anneke Jans in Fact and Fiction". The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record. Retrieved June 16, 2010.
- ^ a b c d "A Dutchwoman's Farm" (PDF). The New York Times. May 7, 1879. Retrieved June 16, 2010.
- ^ "Farms 8-12, 21, 41, (1639 Manatus Map):21: Farm of Domine Everardus Bogardus" on Early Manhattan History website. Quote: "Anneke Jans died at Albany. She was dead by 21 June 1663 when here heirs sold the land too Dirk Wesselsxxv. It does not seem that the sale was completed as on 9 March 1671, the heirs of Anneke Jans made a deed of the property to Francis Lovelace, the royal governor, thus vest this property to the crown.xxvi This property stayed in possession of the crown until 23 November 1705, when Edward, Viscount Cornbury, then captain-general and governor of the Province of New York, acting for Queen Anne, granted the Domine’s Bouwery to Trinity Church."
- ^ a b c Bradley at al. (1992), p.7
- ^ a b Gray, Christopher (April 27, 2008). "St. John's Chapel - A Chapel the City Fought to Save". The New York Times. Retrieved June 16, 2010.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-300-11465-2.
- ^ Augustyn & Cohen (1997) Note: The Goerck-Mangin map shows the boundaries of Hudson Square (not labelled as such) before the southern boundary was moved from North Moore Street north to Beach Street.
- ^ Augustyn & Cohen (1997) Note: The streets surrounding Hudson Square (labelled as such) are clearly shown to be Varick, Hudson, Laight and Beach Streets.
- ^ a b Burrows & Wallace (1999), p.374
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8129-3107-5.
- ^ a b c d Burrows & Wallace (1999), p.457-58
- ^ Bradley et al. (1992), p.8
- ^ "The St. John's Annual Festival". The New York Times. June 5, 1864. Retrieved June 16, 2010.
- ^ Shookster, Linda (December 11, 2005). "St. John's Park: NY's First Ice Skating "Rink"". OldNewYork. Retrieved June 16, 2010.
- ^ "The Earliest New York City Parks" on the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation website
- ^ a b c Pearson, Marjorie et al. "NYCLPC Upper East Side Historic District Designation Report" Archived November 3, 2012, at the Wayback Machine New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (May 1991)
- ISBN 978-1-60354-055-1. (Reprinted by Scholarly Press, 1976; often referred to as WPA Guide to New York City.)
- ^ Burrows & Wallace (1999), p.715
- ^ "Sale of St. John's Park" (PDF). The New York Times. October 20, 1866. Retrieved June 16, 2010.
- ^ "St. John's Park; The Park to be Changed into a Railroad Freight Depot--Plans for the Construction of the Buildings, &c" (PDF). The New York Times. March 8, 1867. p. 1. Retrieved June 16, 2010.
- ^ a b c Bradley et al. (1992), p.12
- ^ "Local Intelligence: St. John's Park" (PDF). The New York Times. November 15, 1867. Retrieved June 16, 2010.
- ^ Bradley et al. (1992), p.23
- ^ a b Burrows & Wallace (1999), p.944
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 15, 2018.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 15, 2018.
- ^ a b Bradley et al. (1992), p.3
- ^ Bradley et al. (1992), pp.13-14
- ISBN 978-1-60354-055-1. (Reprinted by Scholarly Press, 1976; often referred to as WPA Guide to New York City.)
- ^ Illustration: St. John's Terminal; Railroad.net: New York Central's 1934 West Side Improvement
- ^ "134 Hudson Street" on the New York City Geographic Information System map
- ISBN 0-394-72024-5. p.387. Quote: "[S]o huge was the Triborough [Bridge] that the causeway [between Randall's and Ward's Islands] was a mere incident in its construction, as was the "flying junction" on Randall's Island, the largest batch of traffic-sorting spaghetti ever concocted ... Triborough was not a bridge so much as a traffic machine, the largest ever built." (emphasis added)
- ^ "Holland Tunnel Rotary". Studio 5 Partnership. Archived from the original on January 5, 2015. Retrieved January 3, 2015.
- ^ "Rehabilitation of Holland Tunnel New York exit plaza to begin this month". Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. March 20, 2003. Archived from the original on December 30, 2014. Retrieved December 29, 2014.
- ^ "Port Authority completes Holland Tunnel improvements". Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. December 29, 2004. Archived from the original on December 30, 2014. Retrieved December 29, 2014.
- ^ Google (January 6, 2015). "St. John's Park" (Map). Google Maps. Google. Retrieved January 6, 2015.
- ^ "No trespassing sign", Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved January 31, 2015.
- ^ Penn, Emily (October 19, 2011). "Richard Serra - St. John's Rotary Ark, 1980, New York". Penn Research. Retrieved January 1, 2015.
- ISBN 9780226748801
- ^ Sauro, William (January 30, 1987). "Outdoor Exhibition Closes". The New York Times. Retrieved January 3, 2015.
- ^ "Joie de Vivre". Alliance for the Arts. Retrieved January 4, 2015.
- ISBN 9780813550039
Bibliography
- Cohen, Paul E. and Augustyn, Robert T. (1997). Manhattan in Maps: 1527-1995. New York: Rizzoli International Press. p. 98. ISBN 0847820521.
- Bradley, Betsy, et al. "NYCLPC Tribeca North Historic District Designation Report" Archived August 6, 2012, at the Wayback Machine New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (December 1992)
- ISBN 0-195-11634-8.
External links
- Media related to St. John's Park at Wikimedia Commons