Abingdon Square Park is located in the New York City borough of Manhattan in Greenwich Village. The park is bordered by Eighth Avenue, Bank Street, Hudson Street and West 12th Street.
The quarter acre (1,000 m2) green space is one of New York City's oldest parks. It is maintained by the Abingdon Square Alliance, a community-based park association, in cooperation with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.
New York City acquired the land on which the park resides on April 22, 1831, and it was enclosed with a cast iron fence in 1836. In the 1880s, an effort was initiated by Mayor Abram Stevens Hewitt to expand public access to parks. Architect Calvert Vaux was part of a group that created a new design for Abingdon Square.
The square was part of a 300-acre (1.2 km2) estate bought by Sir Peter Warren in 1740. Abingdon Square was named for a prominent eighteenth century area resident, Charlotte Warren, who married Englishman Willoughby Bertie, the 4th Earl of Abingdon and received the land as a wedding gift from her father. Although most explicitly British place names in Manhattan were altered after the Revolutionary War, Abingdon Square retained its name due to the well-known patriotic sympathies of Charlotte and the Earl. On August 3, 2009, a small garden was established as a memorial to Adrienne Shelly, an actress and film producer who was slain in her office located in 15 Abingdon Square.
The M11 and M14A bus lines terminate at Abingdon Square.
Famous quotes containing the words square and/or park:
“Interpreting the dance: young women in white dancing in a ring can only be virgins; old women in black dancing in a ring can only be witches; but middle-aged women in colors, square dancing...?”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I’m engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.”
—Sir John Betjeman (1906–1984)