Washington Square Park

My thoughts today return to Washington Square Park, home of the triumphal arch commemorating the 100th Anniversary of Washington's Inauguration and designed by Stanford White. To think of the things that happened in this square is to think of the history of this city, and this nation, and in a real sense, of the world in the last two hundred years. Today it sits at the heart of the largest private university in the US, New York University. But think back to the wealthy and elegant families of the 19th Century that lived in that line of town-homes on the northern shore, think of Henry James chronicling their bondage to society in his crushing novel, Washington Square. Think of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in 1911 that brought the city to it's knees in a grief we wouldn't experience again until September 11th, 2001. Look for the "hanging tree" and imagine the last thought of those who swung from it's menacing branch. Then think of happier times, of the glorious music that filled the fountain in the fifties and sixties, the folk explosion that informed a generation of not only musicians but poets and painters and politicos. Look around you at the new lamps and the new flower beds, the new pathways and dog runs, the breath of new life in a park that needed some weeding. On a very personal note, I miss my theatre there, the magnificent Manhattan Theatre Source that brought me to Washington Square more often than I would have gone. Now I'll have to make that special effort to get there unmotivated, except by the centuries of memories that whisper through it's trees and the promise of new memories to come.