Weekend Open Thread:
Gracie Square
This entry was posted on Saturday, April 11th, 2009 at 9:30 am and is filed under Weekend Open Thread. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Of course I love Grammercy Square, but you can’t get in without a key, and so many of the others — Abingdon, Sheridan, Union, Washington are full of ghosts for me — and yet as you know of all the ‘squares’ Gracie will always be in my memory a place of youth (because of the schools, and my own) and friendship, yours included.
Is it true that many or even most of these small squares are locked and permit ingress only by people who live in the nearby buildings?
Ellen
A true New York skyline, with the slender and severe staccato bursts, with elements of solid and void, that once characterized all of New York’s skyscape, but which has, in so many parts of town, been so sadly “flattened out” by banal newer structures. Once, approaching the Battery on the ferry was like approaching Oz, or some fantastical Burgundian castle who’s turrets and spires drew you in and upward; now its seems more like an unyielding blank wall, a fearful bulwark.
To Ellen: Grammercy is definitely key holders only, and Sheridan Square Triangle Park is a viewing park, not open to casual wandering and sitting, but it’s tiny. I don’t know of any other key only parks in Manhattan.
Just like my old garden apartment from the NSA Algiers days, nothing is accessible these days like it used to be. Change, all is change, much of it for the better.