Well that’s the Washington Arch to you (and me). A reporter from the Wall Street Journal gains access to inside – and top of – the Arch.
“We don’t allow people up here,” the [NYC] historic preservationist explained. “The stairway is quite dangerous and the roof is quite fragile. If we allowed the public up here, the roof would fail quite quickly.”
That’s a pity because the view from the top of the arch is unparalleled, quite literally at a crossroads of the city’s history.
Looking north, you get a clear shot all the way up Fifth Avenue. The skyscrapers of Wall Street rise to the south, the construction of the Freedom Tower proceeding apace and now clearly visible. Just below you is the park itself, brittle and beautiful in the winter morning light, and the genteel Greek Revival townhouses of Washington Square North.
Mr. Krawchuk [Parks Department] said that in 1917 a group of “Bohemians” led by the artists Marcel Duchamp and John Sloan and the poet Gertrude Drick broke into the arch and climbed to the roof. “They had a picnic and a party and drank tea late into the night,” he said, though one suspects stronger beverages might also have been involved. “Gertrude Drick read a proclamation declaring the free and independent state of Greenwich Village. Sloan did an etching of them all huddled here in the early morning hours.”
I’ve always secretly wanted to go to the top of the Arch. One Christmas Eve, a few years back, the door was left ajar and I stepped in the entryway and peeked up the stairs. I was tempted. I could almost see as much as the pictures that accompany the article show (Parks Department must have put restrictions as such). The view from the top does sound quite impressive; as for now, I can only imagine.
Photo: Daniella Zalcman
Why can’t the city pay to have the stairs and roof repaired and then Charge $$ for people to climb up to the arch? It may pay for itself!
The arch wasn’t built to be load-bearing at all (there’s hardly any steel in the structure, it’s all stone and brick masonry) so any traffic would basically destroy the structure and the roof… and there’s no way to reinforce/rebuild it without taking the entire thing apart, which would be outrageously expensive.
Thanks, Daniella, for the background info! Nice.
Cathryn.
I figured you would have read and posted about this article. I am fascinated by the fact that Duchamp et al. drank tea inside the Arch.
I can’t help but notice how a Rupert Murdoch paper representative gets to go in while the rest of us don’t. It’s typical of the way too close relationship between the Bloomberg administration and Murdoch’s propaganda empire.