Tompkins Square Park

Before this ten acre space became a public park, it was a vast salt marsh used by the Lenape for hunting and fishing. Peter Stuyvesant, the last director general of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, once claimed this swampy land for his own estate to harvest marsh grasses for his cattle. When the city finally filled and graded the area in the eighteen thirties, the land was officially designated as a public square, though it lacked the elegance of the city’s other planned open spaces. Instead, it became the heart of a dense working-class district and quickly established itself as a primary stage for public assembly and social unrest.