Thursday, December 25, 2003
Big changes coming to Union Square
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Big changes coming to Union Square
The landmarked asphalt strip of Union Square North we know as the site of the Greenmarket is going to be rebuilt, and the local preservationists are concerned.
In 1997 the National Parks Service designated this section as a National Historic Landmark, since it was not only the site of the first labor union demonstration and march in 1882 but also served as the grandstand and rally point for Mayday meetings throughout the years, where Socialist and Communist leaders, ranging from Emma Goldman to Harry Bridges, shouted their grievances about Capitalist injustices, with the graceful Palladian Pavilion in the background.
While the much fractured Park itself does not fit a landmark designation - it was restructured many times, raised to accommodate a subway beneath, the Palladian Pavilion was rebuilt, the statues and flagpoles were shuffled to meet the constructions - the North End has remained pristine. Now it's the turn of the space that we have come to cherish on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays as the Greenmarket, brainchild of Barry Benepe in 1975 and flourishing ever since, beloved of grateful New Yorkers who die for a little scrap of cabbage leaf fresh from the farm.
The North End job is a part of a larger scheme, mostly centering on an expansion of the children's' playgrounds that utilizes grants from Councilwoman Margarita Lopez and Borough President C. Virginia Fields. The 14th Street- Union Square BID/LDC, now known as the Union Square Partnership, has engaged the prominent landscape architect firm of Michael Van Volckenburgh of 17th Street, and they have come up with several grand designs (details to follow when I get closer to them, early in 2004.)
The Union Square Community Council, the self-appointed guardians of the park, are expected to review and clarify their positions by the time of their annual meeting of January 21. More opinions are expected. Supervision of National Landmarks in New York is the function of NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, led by Bernadette Castro, and they may be invited to participate in the review, as may the NYC Department of Transportation, who have the responsibility over regulating the traffic around the park.
While the redesign of the Union Square Park proper and the Palladian Pavilion with its defunct bathrooms does not impact the Mayday parade grounds site, still there will be gentrification of the North End. I have some feelings for the old wreck, having looked at it from my office windows daily, for nearly five decades. The Pavilion has been the in the background of the Mayday and other demonstrations. Particularly poignant is the memory of hundreds of demonstrators, on their knees, along the parkside and into 17th Street, silently waiting for the court decision on Ethel and David Rosenberg, as we homebound office workers nearly tiptoed past them, on our ways to the BMT.
The early name, of Union Place, came from the union of Albany Post Road, later named Bloomingdale Road, then Broadway, and Boston Post Road, later Bowery, turning into Fourth Avenue at Cooper Union, renamed Union Square Eastat 14th, then Park Avenue South at 17th Street, continuing as Park Ave from 42nd Street. Logical as anything in NYC. In the famous NYC street redesign of 1807, the potter's field at the juncture was doomed, plowed over and turned into our present pride and joy. In 1928-9 the park was raised six feet, to accommodate the subway. It was no joy in the 1960s when it became a hangout of drug dealing, until rescued by the arrival of the Greenmarket in 1975, and the Zeckendorf Towers that replaced the defunct Klein's On The Square, and Mayor Edward I. Koch's revitalization of 1985, filling the park with lights. 1999 saw the changes around the Gandhi triangle and the subway rebuilding.
As for the Labor Day connection, Peter J. McGuire, a carpenter with vision who in 1881 founded the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, called for an assembly to honor American workers, at City Hall on Tuesday, Sept 5, 1882, which brought out 10,000 union people. They marched to Union Square for speeches and a demonstration, then retired to Reservoir Park (now Bryant Park, then the site of a reservoir fed by the Croton Aqueduct, where the NY Public Library stands, since 1895), for a family picnic. The idea of a Labor Day took hold, Oregon made it a legal holiday in 1887, followed by the US Congress in 1894.
As of the moment, my prejudiced attitude is that the main improvement the area needs is a reliable upward bound escalator at the subway exit on the northeast corner of 14th Street and PAS, under the Food Emporium, which stands dirty and broken ten or more months of the year, for as long as I have been using the Lex Ave trains. I know it is not the BID's responsibility, it is the orphan child of the Zeckendorf people, who received tax breaks in compensation for building and maintaining the escalator. If they knew the curses weary homebound workers heap on their heads, expecting an easy ascent, and instead having to trudge up the filthy contraption, they'd repent. As a start, at least they can reverse the down escalator, which seems to have less troubles, during the evening rush.
Wally Dobelis and the staff of T&V wish you a merry Christmas, healthy New Year, happy Chanukah and bountiful Kwanzaa.
Big changes coming to Union Square
The landmarked asphalt strip of Union Square North we know as the site of the Greenmarket is going to be rebuilt, and the local preservationists are concerned.
In 1997 the National Parks Service designated this section as a National Historic Landmark, since it was not only the site of the first labor union demonstration and march in 1882 but also served as the grandstand and rally point for Mayday meetings throughout the years, where Socialist and Communist leaders, ranging from Emma Goldman to Harry Bridges, shouted their grievances about Capitalist injustices, with the graceful Palladian Pavilion in the background.
While the much fractured Park itself does not fit a landmark designation - it was restructured many times, raised to accommodate a subway beneath, the Palladian Pavilion was rebuilt, the statues and flagpoles were shuffled to meet the constructions - the North End has remained pristine. Now it's the turn of the space that we have come to cherish on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays as the Greenmarket, brainchild of Barry Benepe in 1975 and flourishing ever since, beloved of grateful New Yorkers who die for a little scrap of cabbage leaf fresh from the farm.
The North End job is a part of a larger scheme, mostly centering on an expansion of the children's' playgrounds that utilizes grants from Councilwoman Margarita Lopez and Borough President C. Virginia Fields. The 14th Street- Union Square BID/LDC, now known as the Union Square Partnership, has engaged the prominent landscape architect firm of Michael Van Volckenburgh of 17th Street, and they have come up with several grand designs (details to follow when I get closer to them, early in 2004.)
The Union Square Community Council, the self-appointed guardians of the park, are expected to review and clarify their positions by the time of their annual meeting of January 21. More opinions are expected. Supervision of National Landmarks in New York is the function of NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, led by Bernadette Castro, and they may be invited to participate in the review, as may the NYC Department of Transportation, who have the responsibility over regulating the traffic around the park.
While the redesign of the Union Square Park proper and the Palladian Pavilion with its defunct bathrooms does not impact the Mayday parade grounds site, still there will be gentrification of the North End. I have some feelings for the old wreck, having looked at it from my office windows daily, for nearly five decades. The Pavilion has been the in the background of the Mayday and other demonstrations. Particularly poignant is the memory of hundreds of demonstrators, on their knees, along the parkside and into 17th Street, silently waiting for the court decision on Ethel and David Rosenberg, as we homebound office workers nearly tiptoed past them, on our ways to the BMT.
The early name, of Union Place, came from the union of Albany Post Road, later named Bloomingdale Road, then Broadway, and Boston Post Road, later Bowery, turning into Fourth Avenue at Cooper Union, renamed Union Square Eastat 14th, then Park Avenue South at 17th Street, continuing as Park Ave from 42nd Street. Logical as anything in NYC. In the famous NYC street redesign of 1807, the potter's field at the juncture was doomed, plowed over and turned into our present pride and joy. In 1928-9 the park was raised six feet, to accommodate the subway. It was no joy in the 1960s when it became a hangout of drug dealing, until rescued by the arrival of the Greenmarket in 1975, and the Zeckendorf Towers that replaced the defunct Klein's On The Square, and Mayor Edward I. Koch's revitalization of 1985, filling the park with lights. 1999 saw the changes around the Gandhi triangle and the subway rebuilding.
As for the Labor Day connection, Peter J. McGuire, a carpenter with vision who in 1881 founded the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, called for an assembly to honor American workers, at City Hall on Tuesday, Sept 5, 1882, which brought out 10,000 union people. They marched to Union Square for speeches and a demonstration, then retired to Reservoir Park (now Bryant Park, then the site of a reservoir fed by the Croton Aqueduct, where the NY Public Library stands, since 1895), for a family picnic. The idea of a Labor Day took hold, Oregon made it a legal holiday in 1887, followed by the US Congress in 1894.
As of the moment, my prejudiced attitude is that the main improvement the area needs is a reliable upward bound escalator at the subway exit on the northeast corner of 14th Street and PAS, under the Food Emporium, which stands dirty and broken ten or more months of the year, for as long as I have been using the Lex Ave trains. I know it is not the BID's responsibility, it is the orphan child of the Zeckendorf people, who received tax breaks in compensation for building and maintaining the escalator. If they knew the curses weary homebound workers heap on their heads, expecting an easy ascent, and instead having to trudge up the filthy contraption, they'd repent. As a start, at least they can reverse the down escalator, which seems to have less troubles, during the evening rush.
Wally Dobelis and the staff of T&V wish you a merry Christmas, healthy New Year, happy Chanukah and bountiful Kwanzaa.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 1:48 PM 
