In the 17th century, when the Square first appeared in the city plan, streams drained into a deep gully in front of you. Then, beginning in 1833, geometric paths invited visitors into a leveled square planted with hundreds of trees.
By 1846, Washington Square, with its seats, lamps and ornamental fence, had dramatically changed from the "offensive nuisance" of the 18th century into "a beautiful and fashionable promenade" where adults strolled and children played marbles.
In 1853, American landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing's Rural Essays praised Washington Square, reporting that it had "more well grown specimens and different species of forest trees than any similar space of ground in America."
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