The long process of burying Collect Pond was completed by the mid-1810s, but its watery legacy remained. Streets laid over the former pond created a neighborhood that was briefly fashionable but quickly declined after the filled-in pond began to sink and release putrid gases. The area eventually became the notorious Five Points district, the nation's first great slum.
The squalid Five Points neighborhood gradually gave way to an expanding Civic Center. The first large building on the site contained the New York Halls of Justice and House of Detention. It was constructed over a dense foundation of hemlock piles; nevertheless, the building sagged and stank, even before it opened in 1838. So did its successor (opened in 1902, demolished in 1941). Both occupied the block where this park is now, on the northwest quadrant of the old Collect Pond.
The property has since been stabilized and was placed under the jurisdiction of the Department of Parks and Recreation in 1960. The water feature of the current park, which opened in 2012, recalls the pond that one occupied this site.
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