Spring Street Park

There's a large triangle at Spring Street and Sixth Avenue that I always think of as Christmas Tree Park because years ago a Christmas tree vendor would set up shop there. Once called, variously, Soho Square and Hudson Square Plaza, in 2018 it reopened after a $5.5 million renovation under the name Spring Street Park.

As most New Yorkers know, Sixth Avenue in Manhattan has two names. In 1945 the city, under Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, designated the busy thoroughfare "Avenue of the Americas," "to honor pan-American ideals and principles" and perhaps in recognition of the selection of New York City as the home of the United Nations.

The name never totally caught on; some buildings and businesses use it, others don't. But either way, Spring Street Park houses one of six statues of Latin American heroes erected along the Avenue.

Here, then, is a backlit General José Artigas (1764-1850), the Uruguayan independence hero.

The original cast of the statue, by José Luis Zorrilla de San Martín (1891-1975), has stood in Montevideo for the past 75 years.

Facing north, toward the wide end of the triangle:

And facing south:

The unusual backless benches (with under-bench lighting) and squarish metal swivel chairs are interesting features.

Another are the "moonlighting" lamps, atop tall posts, intended to create a moonlight effect in the light and shadows on the ground.

Plain old London plane trees, among the thousands throughout the city, dominate the canopy, but not exclusively.

The renovation also included, according to DNAInfo, "anti-flooding infrastructure allowing the absorption of 1,140 percent more storm water."

My reason for walking through Spring Street Park is almost always because it's just around the corner from HERE Arts Center, where I've seen many shows (including some great puppet theater) over the years. But if puppets aren't your bag, maybe you're in the market for a Ducati racing motorcycle.

Where better to race noisy bikes, after all, than down Avenue of the Americas with its verdant parks and wide-open lanes?

I'm kidding, of course. But a walk along lower Sixth Avenue repays the urban adventurer seeking a bit of respite from the city's craziness.

All photos © Oren Hope except where noted

Soho Square, Father Fagan Park, and Avenue of the Americas

There's a string of small gardens and parks that decorate Sixth Avenue, otherwise known as Avenue of the Americas, in the West Village. From north to south, there's the Jefferson Market Garden, Minetta Green and Minetta Triangle, Father Demo Square, and Winston Churchill Square. There's also Little Red Square, named not for the Moscow landmark but (presumably) for the adjacent Little Red School House.

The sequence doesn't stop when you continue further south into Soho, because Avenue of the Americas down here refuses to line up precisely in parallel with the streets to its west and east, giving rise to lots of wee triangles too small for buildings.

Down here on the Soho stretch there's nothing with the green density of the Jefferson Market Garden or Minetta Green, but there is, to begin with, the sliver of a triangle known as Charlton Plaza, which I've documented before. Even though it isn't a park, and not even remotely a "plaza," I like it because of its startling narrowness. I note it again today because when I walked by the other day I saw, for the first time, its gate open.

No one was inside that I could see, and, fearing transformation into a Flatlander, I didn't venture in. On the far left, you can see a woman tending the vegetation, but doing it from outside the fence – seems she knows about that sinister Flatland possibility too.

Across the street on the next block, a slightly wider but much less green triangle known as Father Fagan Park doesn't seem to get much use. Those passing through doubtless give little thought to the 27-year-old Franciscan priest who gave his life to rescue two colleagues from a fire at his Thompson Street rectory in 1938 before lending his name to this space. Plaques also honor three firefighters who died in the line of duty at another nearby blaze in 1994.

The tree partially visible on the left, with leaves obscuring the sign, is one of the three callery pear trees planted here that same year.

Seen from the southern end at this early evening hour, Father Fagan Park looks none too appetizing, for sure.

A little farther south you hit Soho Square (not a square but, of course, a triangle), which is larger and more inviting. The northern fringe now hosts a Citi Bike station, one of the few that was positioned sensibly (that is, not taking up valuable parking spaces). On this occasion, you can see that most of the bikes are out, rented. In spite of all the technical problems with the city's new bikeshare program (and the cranky old bats blasting it with unhinged fervor), many's the time I walk by a station with almost all the bikes gone, and I see people riding them around Manhattan all the time, so by that early measure, it's a success.

Is Soho Square a park? Well, I see the Parks Dept. leaf logo on the sign. There's no grass to speak of, but plenty of trees and benches, and a red-and-black paving pattern that sets it off from its surroundings. So I give it the benefit of the doubt and tally it up as a park.

If you're wondering why Sixth Avenue was renamed Avenue of the Americas – or, to be more realistic, why it was given that alternate name – just walk down the southern section and you'll find monuments to figures from Latin American countries. At the southern end of Soho Square, near where its scalene triangle tapers to a point, you'll find General José Artigas, "National Hero of Uruguay," a cattle smuggler turned guerrilla warrior who became "the father of Uruguayan nationhood." This statue is a cast of an original by José Luis Zorrilla de San Martín that stands in Montevideo, and the base – here's a piece of unusual trivia – is of Uruguayan granite.

So, while Avenue of the Americas doesn't actually extend south into any other Americas, you can wander along it and acknowledge some of their heroes, while partaking of the Pan-American spirit that gave Mayor LaGuardia that crazy street-renaming idea in the first place.

Jefferson Market Garden

I must have walked by Jefferson Market Garden a few hundred times before I discovered one could actually visit this Greenwich Village spot.



While the greenery is plainly visible behind the high iron fence adjoining the Jefferson Market Library, the lack of a gate suggests it's a private space. And for years the garden was closed, meant only for viewing from the outside.

Surprise! Those dark days are over.

The entrance isn't on Sixth Avenue but around back, on Greenwich Avenue. And in nice weather the garden is open all day, minded by a volunteer who sits at a small table greeting visitors with a nod and a brochure.

Tucked beside the striking library (formerly a courthouse), the Garden holds within its iron bars a complete, verdant little world—on the site of the old Women's House of Detention. After the demise of that unhappy edifice in 1973, the Parks Department took over, and now, stewarded by local residents, it's a flowery, embirdened oasis of quiet right alongside the bustle of Sixth Avenue. (That's right, "embirdened." Like Sarah Palin and her idol, William Shakespeare, I can coin new words.)

In summer, the richness of the verdure, the smells of the earth, hang so thick in the air you can hardly believe you're in a city.



More unusual than robins and rhododendrons is the fish pond, full of bright golden…fish. (Do I know enough about fish to tell you what kind they are? Is the Pope Jewish?) A scarcity of benches means the garden will never get too crowded, unless there's an event like a concert—or a wedding. Apparently, Miranda got married here on Sex and the City, but thankfully, if the spot is on the route of any gawking tours, such monstrosities have never coincided with any of my visits.

Another Jefferson Market Garden plus: proximity to Roasting Plant Coffee. Just saying.

Park of the Americas and Corona Plaza/National Plaza

Park names are a jumble in the bustling part of Queens known as Corona, a neighborhood I admit I'd previously known only from the line in Paul Simon's song "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard." ("Goodbye Rosie, queen of Corona.")

Aiming for a park that's called Linden Park on all the maps, we disembarked from the No. 7 train at the stop just a block away called 103 St./Corona Plaza. That the Corona neighborhood should have a Corona Plaza seems to make perfect sense, but they have changed the name. To National Plaza. Because it's at National Street, I presume, but why the change? And why does the subway station still have the old name?

The plaza, a block-long triangle under the El, is part of the Park Department's Greenstreets program and on the day we visited it was hosting a busy marketplace at which, as in the rest of the neighborhood, we heard not a single word of English – Spanish only. Here's the plaza, whatever it's called.

And the naming confusion doesn't stop there. We're only just now getting to our actual destination, the onetime Linden Park.

For a reason I haven't been able to uncover, Linden Park has been renamed Park of the Americas, though the old sign has much more character than the generic new ones, as usual.

On this blustery December day an airplane cut through the agitated sky.

Was the name change to Park of the Americas related to the famous one that turned Manhattan's Sixth Avenue into Avenue of the Americas? That happened way back in 1945, but it never stuck – no one uses the new name except the post office. Were they trying again with a sneak attack at an obscure little park in Queens? Or could it be because there's a Linden Park in Brooklyn too?

As you can probably imagine, I don't go looking for flower photos in December. But if I happen upon a rosebush that's still putting out, how can I not take advantage, even if I do have to wait a while for a pause between gusts of wind?

A rose of another sort, this compass rose, points any way you want to go:

This old detailing on the facilities building continues our horticultural theme while evoking decorative times gone by, when Linden Park was still Linden Park.

Meanwhile, the playground displays a more modern flair. One good thing about winter is you can sometimes take a picture of a photogenic playground without anyone playing in it.

This one has appealing yellow squiggles and roofs.

Our visit to Linden Park/Park of the Americas was actually occasioned by a trip to the nearby Louis Armstrong House Museum, where Satchmo and his wife lived for decades and which is now operated as a museum – well worth visiting for music fans – by Queens College and a fundraising foundation. It gets a mention on this parks-focused blog because the Armstrongs turned the lot next door into a very nice garden, which now hosts concerts during the warmer months. Despite what I mentioned above, the museum tour is given in English, not Spanish – the only English we heard during our entire excursion to Corona, although the tour guide did mention that the neighborhood has a growing Asian population. In any case, Corona's ethnic makeup has certainly changed any number of times, even just since Lucille Armstrong decided to buy the house on 107th Street back in the early 1940s.

The museum has two paintings of Satchmo by Tony Bennett, who, speaking of name changes, signs his work "Benedetto." But regardless of ethnic changes or name changes of parks and plazas and singers and everything else, I hope we can all agree on one thing: Long live the Louis Armstrong House Museum. And its garden.

The Golden Swan Garden

Eugene O'Neill, John Sloan, and Rudy Giuliani all take their turns in the history of this obscure little corner of Greenwich Village. The Golden Swan Garden is so obscure that Google Maps doesn't even show it, though the decrepit-looking Washington Square Coffee Shop adjoining the Garden merits a listing.



As "megan c." says on Yelp, the Golden Swan Garden is a "sad, scrungy little patch of land" that's worth a visit because of the history attached. The Golden Swan Café stood here many years ago and played a part in inspiring O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh.

But there's not much to say about the Garden that you can't read on this 'ere sign:



No need to squint, you can read the text here. The yellow banner bears an environmental message, resonating in its fluttery way with one of the place's earlier incarnations: a local recycling center which predated citywide recycling. (Greenwich Village residents were always forward-thinking in that way.)

On my recent visit, the Garden's only occupant was an apparently homeless man rooting through some stuff he'd collected, although the woman in this photo, just beyond the impressive iron fence, had just used it as a shortcut from the West Fourth Street shops and restaurants to Sixth Avenue.



Too bad. It could be nicer. Maybe because it's in a commercial area rather than a residential one, it doesn't get the loving care other Village green spaces get. Right next door are the much more famous West 4th Street Courts, which, as a purely athletic facility, don't get their own post on this blog. But there's a lot more action in The Cage than in Golden Swan Park.

Minetta Green and Minetta Triangle

Across Sixth Avenue from Father Demo Square sit two little parks named after Minetta Brook: Minetta Green and Minetta Triangle.

Minetta Brook, though long since vanished under city streets and buildings, still bubbles somewhere underground, and its memory is marked by Minetta Lane, the famous Minetta Tavern, and these little parks.

The pavement of Minetta Green is even etched with fish:



On a windy early spring day, the Green can feel a bit forlorn. But that can also be conducive to pausing and thinking about history.



According to the Parks Department, "Several families of freed slaves, released by the Dutch, established farms and homes along the Minetta Brook as early as the 1640s. With African Americans continuing to settle here in the 18th and 19th centuries, the area became known as 'Little Africa.'" The Ephemeral New York blog quotes a New York Times report from 1910: "In Minetta Street and Minetta Lane the last of the Cornelia Street colored colony remains entrenched."

The Triangle, a bit larger, feels a lot more expansive. Maybe there's enough vegetation here to make a palpable difference in the air's oxygen content. Or maybe it's all psychological.



But signs of spring were abundant when I ambled through the other day:





And this loudly chirping sparrow was enjoying the day as much as I was.

Charlton Plaza

OK, so this isn't a park. What can you really fit into 0.039 acres anyway? Still something fascinates me about Charlton Plaza, so that I stop and peer into it every time I walk down Sixth Avenue into SoHo. It's the shape, I think: the way it's so much narrower than the height of the particolored wall next to it, giving it an unusual sense of three-dimensionality, and the way it narrows into a tiny wedge that, nevertheless, defiantly displays the tulips some skinny soul squeezes in to plant there.



I've scanned the grounds in vain for the "game tables and benches" the Parks Department website describes.



The site does helpfully note that the property was named Charlton Plaza only in 1996, after Dr. John Charlton, a revolutionary-era physician who in the 1790s became the forward-thinking president of the Medical Society of the State of New York. Neighboring Charlton Street already honored the good doctor.

Back at the narrow(er) end, these trellises formed an appealing springtime tableau on a recent day.