Snow covered Washington Square Park in the early morning after a Nor’easter snowfall.
In Washington Square in June, the rays in the plaza’s paving stones seem like lines of force that attract people to perch on the fountain’s retaining wall and sit on the benches around the perimeter. In February, snow has virtually obliterated the plaza, and plowed paths and footprints speak of passers-by who sought the shortest route through a space occupied by one lonely soul. The square, at the foot of Fifth Avenue, is one of the city’s great public spaces, perhaps best known as a congregating place for musicians during the folk music revival of the 1950s and ‘60s—and for their battles with the city over their right to the turf. Stanford White’s arch of 1892 was inspired by Paris’s Arc de Triomphe. That was another era entirely.