Around Washington Square

It may seem that no part of New York is more familiar to veteran tourgoers than Washington Square. This tour is guaranteed to tell you things you did not know. The focus will be on the history and design of the square itself, and on the history and physical evolution of NYU, which has been part of the square’s history for as long as there’s been a square. Topics will include Robert Moses and his quarter century of unsuccessfully trying to alter the square (he began in 1934 with a plan to transform the square into a formal garden as he contemporaneously and successfully transformed Bryant Park), the history of vehicular traffic in the square, NYU’s various master plans (especially those of Eggers & Higgins and of Philip Johnson and Richard Foster), the transformation of Washington Square South and the incomplete preservation of Washington Square North, the great waves of apartment construction in the 1920s and 1950s that forever altered the scale of the neighborhood and the nature of life in Greenwich Village, and much more.