| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.4

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 244 words from this article are provided below; about 437 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two-hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

It Happened on Washington Square. By Emily Kies Folpe. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. xii, 353 pp. $22.50, ISBN 0-8018-7088-7.)
Emily Kies Folpe has captured much of what is peculiar, that is, both strange and unique, about Greenwich Village in New York City by focusing on the small park that has come to represent it to the world outside. In this gem of a book that thoroughly investigates and marvelously illustrates this "small park with a long history" (p. 1), Folpe reveals the way in which Washington Square, like the Village itself, has become a repository of virtually every earlier architectural style while falling prey to the modernizing impetus of commercial growth, fueled largely by the presence of New York University, both as an educational institution with a burgeoning student population and as a landlord eager to profit from an increasingly valuable neighborhood, and by New York politicians who would sacrifice Washington Square's integrity to the lure of commercial progress.	1
Washington Square, Folpe notes, defies ready categorization, having served as a potter's field, a military parade ground, a site of urban riots, a mecca for folk singers, and a nexus for drug deals. It remains a symbol of the way in which the Village valorizes heterogeneity as the current park provides dog runs, tables for speed chess players, a play area restricted to toddlers and their guardians, and even courts for petanque, a game similar to bocce.	. . .

There are about 437 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.