Stuyvesant Square

Stuyvesant Square owes its existence to a legal battle between a wealthy landowner and the city of New York. In eighteen thirty-six, Peter Gerard Stuyvesant sold this four-acre plot of his family farm to the city for a symbolic five dollars. He included a specific condition in the deed requiring the city to enclose the park with an iron fence. When the city failed to build the enclosure, the Stuyvesant family sued to force the development, finally ensuring the park was properly fenced and landscaped by eighteen fifty.