Friends of Stuyvesant Square Park

A painful legacy of Covid is the terrible condition of Nathan D. Perlman Pl. You may recall that a refrigerated trailer was placed here during Covid to receive and store the corpses of those who died in Beth Israel Hospital. The time has come to ask the Department of Transportation to repair the damage to the road caused by the refrigerated trailer. Please join our letter writing campaign.

Once there was a time when these fountains worked beautifully. You could sit quietly and watch the birds or just contemplate the sound of water over stones. This was many, many years ago.

$600,000 renovation and another season without a fountain. Perhaps the signage will help?

A reminder that signage is not to be affixed to the historic, landmarked cast iron fencing. I hope all neighbors will join with us to ensure that the fountains are operational very soon.

While a fundraising gala is a worthy cause, we remind our friends that affixing any signs to the historic and landmarked cast iron fence violates the NYC Administrative Code.

Please join us in our letter writing campaign to the Department of Parks appealing for repair of the BigBelly Trash Receptacle, which has been an eyesore for more than a year. This was paid for with the generous funding of the SPNA and is now unrepairable. Thank you!

Thank you to everyone who has written letters about getting our beautiful historic fountains operational. FOSSP is asking Parks for a Zoom meeting to get a specific timetable for when these will both be operational. If you are interesting in attending, please let us know. Thanks again!

Please join us in requesting funds from the Stuyvesant Park Neighbirhiod Association (“SPNA”) for the repair of this historic cast iron fence. Not long ago FOSSP helped raise $600,000 for the restoration of the fence and we should now do what we can to ensure it is repaired quickly.

As we get started for another year of advocacy for Stuyvesant Square Park, please join our Board in Lobby Day, on February 14. We will be showing our love for the park and asking our elected officials to ensure that the two fountains are repaired and operating by May 1. Contact us to get names and addresses of your elected officials and Community Board members.

A friend of the park draws our attention to this troubling historical account of Peter Stuyvesant, perhaps the most important architect of the establishment of slavery in the Dutch colony of New Netherlands:

“Peter Stuyvesant was an extreme racist who targeted Jews and other minorities including Catholics and energetically tried to prohibit them from settling in then New Amsterdam.”

eg. Director-General Stuyvesant To The Directors At Amsterdam (1664)

"This day fortnight arrived here your Honors’ Vessel, the Musch [Sparrow], with forty head of slaves, sent to us by Vice Director Beck to procure provisions and all sorts of timber work, fix ox carts and a new rosmill. The negroes and negresses have all arrived safely and in health, but were, on an average, quite old, and as the skipper alleges, rejected by the Spaniards. The product of the greater part appears by the accompanying account of the public vendue [slave auction]. They would have brought more, had they not been so old."

The Case Against Peter Stuyvesant - New York Almanack There is a Stuyvesant Square in Manhattan at 16th Street and 2nd Avenue with a statue of Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch governor of its New Amsterdam colony, a Stuyvesant High School, and a Stuyvesant Town residential development. At least one group wants these places renamed and the statue remove...

We are pleased to announce our FOSSP Summer Series of online events for Friends of Stuyvesant Square Park (and friends!). This will include three online horticultural tours and our online gala featuring a solo musician in the Park. Plus: an interview update on our effort to put Stuyvesant Square Park back on the map of New York City. Please see your monthly newsletter for details. Thanks to all who have worked on these projects.

We have been working to put Stuyvesant Square Park (back) on the map. Please help us reach the Borough President as part of this important effort. News to follow!

The New York City Subway Map as You’ve Never Seen It Before The city has changed drastically over the past 40 years, yet the M.T.A. map designed in 1979 has largely endured.