Idyllic Park Becomes a Battlefield of Ideals

On a warm spring morning, Washington Square stirs to life.

The Greenwich Village park fills up with mothers and toddlers, old men playing chess, students sipping coffee, and street musicians unpacking guitars as sunlight glistens off the historic marble archway. It is a tableau of urban tranquillity.

But appearances can be deceiving.

A long-running dispute over park renovation has turned the landmark square into a battleground for community groups, which are quarreling over its physical appearance -- and its future. Recent public hearings have been nasty free-for-alls, dividing neighbors who have lived side by side for years and posing tough questions:

Should the park, dating to the 1820s, be restored as a model of precise urban planning, with an iron fence designed to keep out dogs and vagrants? Or should the now-scruffy square, long home to beatniks, folkies, rap poets, hip hop artists and other iconoclasts, be left as it is?

The city’s Landscape Preservation Commission approved a redesign plan last week, and work is expected to begin this summer. Under the $16-million project, the park’s famous sunken plaza -- a gathering spot for performance artists and political speakers -- would be raised up to street level and realigned with the archway. There would also be renovations to paths and gardens, which have grown shabby.

Then there is the fence, designed as a 4-foot-high iron and granite barrier, which a coalition of local groups has vowed to fight.

As she lingered recently at the park’s northern entrance to admire the 77-foot-high white marble arch, designed by architect Stanford White and dedicated in 1895, Beverly Farber was appalled at the thought that anyone would erect an iron fence around the square.

“What’s the real agenda behind doing this?” she asked. “Why would you keep people out of a park, even at night, since it’s always been a people’s park?”

But Robert Carreon, who has lived near the square for nearly 35 years, said a move to clean up the park and build a fence was “perfectly acceptable, if you really want to see this remarkable spot preserved. There’s no danger of the square losing its character because this is the heart of Greenwich Village, and tradition here won’t ever die out.”

Driving the debate is a 20-year real estate boom that has turned the once quiet, moderately priced neighborhood of town houses and apartment buildings into one of the city’s priciest areas. Elegant co-ops and condominiums ringing the square sell for $2 million and up.

And as gentrification has become a fact in Greenwich Village, the strains between the area’s bohemian past and its more sedate present have grown.

Landmarks from the area’s rich cultural past are closing, such as the Bottom Line nightclub, a venue for stars from the worlds of pop, jazz and folk music. New York University, which borders the park’s southern boundary, owned the Bottom Line property and forced it to close when the club’s operators could not pay back rent. The university hopes to construct new facilities and expand existing buildings in the area.

As the park’s surroundings change, Washington Square remains one of the few spots in Lower Manhattan where visitors can enjoy open space under a sky not blocked out by tall buildings. The 10-acre swatch of green and concrete also includes swings, two dog runs, rows of benches and historical statues.

“I’ve been here [in the park] for more than 40 years, I’ve seen it all,” said James Gallman, a street artist in his 70s who is known as the Matchstick Man because he makes jewelry boxes and other items out of matchsticks and glue. “I think they should leave this place alone.... We don’t need to mess with it.”

Similar feelings were expressed at a series of recent public meetings. George Vellonakis, a city parks official who designed the renovation plan, was greeted by Village protesters at one hearing who held handmade signs calling him a “rapist.”

But others turned out to support the city’s plan. Some residents voiced anger over the nighttime influx of homeless people. They noted that community leaders had been lobbying to renovate the park for decades, and said that a fence would be a small price to pay to protect it.

As the arguments continue, city officials agreed last week to drop a plan to install a locked gate at one entrance to the park. But Vellonakis has strongly defended the rest of his proposals.

Washington Square, he said, is the last of Manhattan’s small neighborhood squares to be renovated. His plan calls for replacing stretches of concrete with grass, elevating the sunken plaza so that handicapped people can better access the space, and realigning the plaza with the archway to offer more sweeping views.

“Most of the city’s plans have been supported by local residents,” he said, adding that virtually all parks in New York have fences and that the one proposed for this park would be an unobtrusive structure designed to protect landscaping.

“The protests we’ve received are typical of Greenwich Village,” Vellonakis said. “It’s all about change, and many people who have lived here a long time don’t want us to do anything to the park. They don’t even want simple changes.”

Vellonakis insists that he wants to retain the park’s character. He points proudly to the sunken plaza area, which on weekends is transformed into a free-wheeling performance space with musicians, jugglers, actors and political speakers. There is no schedule, just a spontaneous expression of art and opinion.

Critics of the city’s plan agree that the plaza symbolizes the square’s jumble of people and feisty sense of freedom. And that, they say, is precisely the point: Tampering with the chemistry of this open space could ruin it.

“When this plaza was created, it paid tribute to the great traditions of the square,” said Luther Harris, author of “Around Washington Square.” “This was the place where folk singers and other protesters during the McCarthy era and civil rights movement would gather, to speak out and be heard, and that same spirit continues today.”

The plan to redesign the park, he said, “is a ham-handed attempt to bring more order to the area. We all agree that the park needs new walkways. It’s run-down. But the city shouldn’t be destroying the things that made Washington Square so unique.”