WASHINGTON SQUARE LOOKING NORTH
APRIL 16, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 103

When Greenwich Village was a remote hamlet north of New York, Washington Square was a potter's field. After the 1822 cholera epidemic encouraged many New Yorkers to settle in the Village, the field became a park surrounded by impressive homes, a church, and a new university. In 1936, Abbott took three photographs from the Square, each looking north. The first was a panoramic view showing "The Row" of Greek Revival town houses on Washington Square North bisected by Fifth Avenue and the Washington Arch, which commemorated the centennial of the inauguration of the first president of the United States. Three epochs of New York's history are juxtaposed: the pre-Civil War era, the Gilded Age, and modern times, represented by the towering One Fifth Avenue (1928) and the Empire State Building (1931) 34 blocks north.

Under bright sun, the shadow of large tree in the foreground fills the middle ground. Although the park has since been redesigned and the tree has died, its trunk remains. Carved into a "totem pole," it serves as a memento of the park's more recent history as a hippie mecca.

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