Description of the attraction
Tompkins Square Park covers more than four hectares in the east of Manhattan. Now it is even difficult to imagine what a turbulent history this beautiful and peaceful place had.
The public park, named after the Vice President of the United States, Daniel Tompkins, was founded here in 1834. Then the quarter was called Little Germany because of the large number of German immigrants. Cheap housing attracted new visitors - in the 1840s the area was flooded with Irish people fleeing the "potato famine". Those who came to America earlier and had already got a job were unhappy with the influx of new workers. Not infrequently one could see the announcements “Help needed. Irish people do not apply. " When looking for work, many presented themselves with German names.
Real Germans gradually began to move to richer areas, but Little Germany finally disappeared after the tragedy of 1904. The excursion steamer General Slocum, rented by a church congregation from Little Germany, caught fire and sank in the East River. More than a thousand people died, mostly women and children - there was nothing to put out the fire on the ship, the fire hoses rotted, like the life jackets, and most Americans of that time did not know how to swim. Until September 11, 2001, this was the most massive loss of life in New York. The monument to the victims of General Slocum still stands in Tompkins Square Park - a fountain by Bruno Louis Zimm in the form of a stele of pink marble with a relief depicting two children's profiles.
The area was also known for constant civil unrest. Local residents met in Tompkins Square Park - immigrants did not spend money on newspapers, but learned the news on the benches. Here, protests, clashes with the police and even bloody riots took place: in 1857, 1863, 1874, 1877.
The last time people ran into the police here was in 1988, when Tompkins Square Park was being cleared of the homeless. By this time, the park had become a haven for drug addicts and members of local gangs, and in 1989, the "Tompkins Square butcher," the mentally ill Daniel Rakovitz, killed a woman, cooked her soup and fed them to the homeless in the park.
But today nothing will remind a tourist of all these horrors. In the early 1990s, the area was improved, the park was reconstructed. Now it is closed for the night, and during the day they walk with children, play basketball, handball, ping-pong and chess, take air baths. The park prides itself on its collection of elms - a rarity in America since the 1930s, when many trees across the country died from Dutch elm disease. One local elm is especially revered by American Hare Krishnas - under it in 1966 the mantra "Hare Krishna" was sung for the first time in the USA.
Another feature of Tompkins Square Park is the dog playground. The large sand-covered space includes not only benches and picnic tables, but also three pet pools. Every year on Halloween, the most representative dog parades in the United States are held here, gathering up to 400 dogs in specially tailored costumes.
