Tompkins Square Park

Tompkins Square Park
The park's entrance is at East 7th and Avenue A, and it has been the heart of the neighborhood since it opened.
location in New York City
Type	public
Location	Alphabet City, Manhattan, New York City
Coordinates	40°43′35″N 73°58′54″W / 40.72639°N 73.98167°W / 40.72639; -73.98167Coordinates: 40°43′35″N 73°58′54″W / 40.72639°N 73.98167°W / 40.72639; -73.98167
Area	10.5 acres (4.2 ha)
Operated by	New York City Department of Parks and Recreation

Tompkins Square Park is a 10.5-acre (4.2 ha) public park in the Alphabet City portion of East Village, Manhattan, New York City. United States. The square-shaped park, bounded on the north by East 10th Street, on the east by Avenue B, on the south by East 7th Street, and on the west by Avenue A, is abutted by St. Marks Place to the west.

Tompkins Square Park is located on land near the East River, that originally consisted of salt marsh and open tidal meadows, "Stuyvesant meadows" (map, left), the largest such ecosystem on Mannahatta island, but has since been filled in. The unimproved site, lightly taxed by the city as most agricultural properties were, seemed scarcely worth the expense of improving to its owners, the Stuyvesants, who inherited it from the 17th-century grant awarded to Peter Stuyvesant, and their Pell and Fish relatives. The City aldermen, to raise the tax base of the city, accepted a gift of land in 1829 from Peter Gerard Stuyvesant (1778–1847) with the understanding that it would remain a public space, and compensated other owners with $62,000 in city funds to set aside a residential square; transforming the muddy site took another $22,000 before Tompkins Square was opened in 1834. Surrounded by a cast-iron fence the following year and planted with trees, the square was expected to have a prosperous and genteel future, which was undercut, however, by the Panic of 1837 that brought the city's expansion to a halt.

Tompkins Square Park is named for Daniel D. Tompkins (1774–1825), Vice President of the United States under President James Monroe and the Governor of New York from 1807 until 1817. He had overseen some early drainage in the locality in connection with minor fortifications in the War of 1812. The park was opened in 1850.