Jackson Square

Before it was a park, this triangular plot at Greenwich Avenue and Eighth Avenue was simply an open street intersection, used through 1872 for political rallies on what had started as a pair of Native footpaths. Calvert Vaux and parks superintendent Samuel Parsons Jr. redesigned it in the 1880s into what Parsons called 'a great bouquet of brilliant flowers and leaves,' and seventeen pin oaks went in along the perimeter in the 1930s. Its cast-iron fountain dates only to 1990, built to evoke those Victorian origins, and a 2019 rebuild made the paths and benches ADA-compliant.