A week ago, on my way to something else, I
came across Sheridan Square—not just
a triangle, but, as you can see from this photo I took, a sliver of a triangle, in Greenwich Village. The square was
dedicated in 1896 in honor of the General Philip Sheridan, but well into the 20th
century, its nexus at Barrow Street, West 4th Street, and Washington
Place had made it a traffic safety island.
According to a 1996 oral history interview given by longtime Greenwich Village preservation activist Doris Diether, that location, outside a local Sloan’s supermarket,
also made the triangle a magnet for illegally parked cars, delivery trucks, and
motorcycles. The latter bore visitors to and from a local drug hangout, The
Haven, nicknamed a “juice bar.” All in all, hardly the type of spot to honor
one of the great Civil War heroes.
The establishment of a viewing garden in 1982
changed all that. It was primarily the result of the vision of two women:
community activist Vera Schneider, who spearheaded the formation of the
nonprofit Sheridan Square Triangle Association, seeing it as a means of
eliminating the burgeoning drug trade, and Pamela Berdan, who designed the
garden. (Her Jefferson Market Garden is another Greenwich Village adornment.)
The time I walked past this spot—late autumn—can
hardly be conducive to seeing this garden at its best. I’ll try to view it
again in spring, when tulips, azaleas, rhododendrons and crabapples are in
bloom, or summer, when other perennials and annuals enjoy their
place in the sun.
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