Is Washington Square Park’s Construction Truly Over? Bathrooms are Open and It Appears So!

Updated 12:15 p.m.

Parks Department District offices:

Women’s Room:


Family Room:

Where will NYPD *be*?

Lots of park workers outside in a trailer along Washington Sq South:

Looking west:

Looking Northeast:




The “Arch View Corridor” (maybe the cars could be removed too so as not to disrupt it?):

What a long road Phase III endured (and the rest of us with it). Parts of Phase II were moved into it at one point (the large Dog Run and the “Mounds”). The construction on Phase III began in the summer of 2012 with a projected end date of summer 2013. That date came and went. We heard at one point Halloween, end of year 2013, etc. etc. But finally it is all open as of mid-April 2014. The bathrooms are simple but functional — they work and are clean!

The park’s bathrooms, of course, were the one element of the renovation of Washington Square that pretty much everyone considered most important and wanted completed FIRST. But the Parks Department in its never-ending mission (particularly under former Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe) to be contrary to community wishes placed the bathroom construction in the very last phase of the Park’s redesign plans. In fact, the bathrooms did not even open when the rest of Phase III did last week! But they are open now (they opened Monday, April 14th late in the day).

A glass canopy will be placed on the front (and back?) of the building so there is that one thing left.

There will be a ribbon cutting at some point in the near future.

Washington Square Park’s redesign construction began in late December 2007. It was completed in three (or really four) phases of work where large sections of the park were closed off. Now, over six years after construction began, it is complete.

For everything ever written here about Phase III, go here.
For everything ever written about Phase II, go here.
Phase I did not have a ‘tag’ so it’s interspersed throughout the archives.

I hadn’t quite assimilated the fact that this is the very end of the construction! What now? (I think regular readers know.)

Photos: Cathryn

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