Washington Square Park

On our list of the best activities in New York.

Long before it was a park, the eastern two-thirds of the square served as the city's potter's field, and an estimated 20,000 burials remain beneath the lawns from the yellow-fever years of the 1790s. Stanford White's marble arch, built in 1890 to replace a temporary one from the previous year's Washington centennial, anchors the north end, and the fountain plaza in front of it became a folk-music gathering spot once Jane Jacobs and her neighbors defeated a 1960s plan to route a highway through the park. Chess and gaming tables still stand at the square's south and northwest corners, a legacy of that car-free era.