What Washington Square looked like when it was a military parade ground

Washington Square has been many things throughout New York City history.

In the 17th century, it was a marshy hunting ground, according to NYC Parks; two centuries later, it served as a potters field, execution site, and then a neighborhood park bordering an elite residential enclave.

The 20th century brought artists, protestors, NYU students, and park-goers enjoying the car-free ambiance.

But in 1826, Washington Square was rebranded as the Washington Military Parade Ground, a place where military exercises were conducted with soldiers in uniform.

Though the Square became an official public park in 1827, military regiments still gathered there—as this lithograph from 1851 reveals.

Click it to enlarge and take a look at this rich scene. It was painted by Otto Boetticher, a German immigrant turned New Yorker who enlisted to fight for the Union in 1861 and spent time in a Confederate prison camp.

But a decade before that, he captured the city’s Seventh Regiment “on review,” along with what look like well-to-do civilians in the park, the low-rise houses of University Place and West Fourth Street in the distance.

“In the background are two Gothic Revival–style edifices, New York University’s main building (also known as the University Building), to the left, and the Reformed Dutch Church, toward the center; both were demolished in the early 1890s,” states Metmuseum.org, which has this lithograph in its collection.

A portion of that circa-1835 university building actually exists—a spire is on display just south of the square near Bobst Library.

[Image: metmuseum.org]