1844
The landscape takes shape
The first recorded meeting of the Trustees took place on November 15, 1844. Pine describes the practical decisions that followed: a border of privet, a hundred trees and plans for a fountain. The planting list included chestnuts, willows, lindens, maples, elms and many other species.
A grand fountain modeled on those outside St. Peter’s in Rome proved too ambitious for the contributions available. A more modest fountain followed about 1848, according to Pine’s account of work undertaken roughly two years after the first proposal. The original $5,300 proposal had been tabled in April 1846 when contributions fell short.
Homes with connections to a growing city
By the middle of the nineteenth century, houses filled much of the Park’s perimeter. Pine’s account connects those homes with people whose work reached far beyond Gramercy: Peter Cooper in education and industry, Cyrus W. Field in the Atlantic cable undertaking, and Samuel J. Tilden and John Bigelow in civic and library work.
Calvary Church and the Friends Meeting House served the growing neighborhood as places of worship, gathering and service.
Gramercy and the Atlantic cable · Gramercy’s houses of worship and community institutions
Mid-19th-century Gramercy
In 1858, Pine records a grand illumination in the Park celebrating the first Atlantic cable. Cyrus W. Field and Peter Cooper were closely involved in the undertaking. That first cable failed, but a lasting connection was established in 1866. The One Lexington Avenue profile follows the people behind the cable.
1859
A meeting house on the square
King & Kellum’s Friends Meeting House introduced a place of Quaker worship to Gramercy Park South in 1859. Its spare interior and broad frontage offered a different architectural presence among the houses.
Brotherhood Synagogue’s history links the Quakers who worshipped here before it with abolitionism and shelter for people escaping enslavement. Brotherhood acquired the building in 1974; accounts of the closing and move place them in 1975.
LPC · Building history · Brotherhood Synagogue · Congregational account · The building’s later life
1863
The Civil War reaches the Park
Gramercy’s history includes the violence of New York’s July 1863 Draft Riots. Black New Yorkers were attacked across the City. Pine records the presence of troops in Gramercy Park and recalls cannon stationed near its northeast corner.
Residents also organized wartime relief and medical support. Their accounts place Gramercy in the larger history of the war, alongside the troops stationed in the garden.
Pine’s Civil War account · PDF · Relief work and the Draft Riots
Austin Flint’s memoir recalls William T. Lusk commanding a detachment in the Park; Saint-Gaudens remembers two cannon at the northeast corner. In 1865, the Trustees unsuccessfully applied for expenses caused by the military occupation.
1875
Remembering the founder
John Ruggles Strong placed a tablet in the Park in 1875 to commemorate his grandfather’s creation of the garden in 1831. The tablet made the act of founding part of the landscape itself.
Later generations would add the Ruggles Fountain and Edwin Booth’s monument. The fountain’s bronze medallion portrayed the Park’s founder; Booth’s statue showed the actor as Hamlet, honoring the man who founded The Players at 16 Gramercy Park South.
1883
A new way to live around the square
The apartment building at 34 Gramercy Park East introduced an early cooperative venture to the square in 1883. Taller buildings would become part of Gramercy’s residential fabric alongside its townhouses.
Pine · Early cooperative apartments · PDF
George W. da Cunha designed the building. Pine described it as one of the first cooperative apartment houses in New York; that qualified description avoids making a disputed claim to absolute priority.
1888
A home for The Players
Edwin Booth founded The Players in 1888 and gave the club his house at 16 Gramercy Park South. Stanford White adapted the building for its new role as a meeting place for people in theatre and the other arts.
Booth wanted actors to meet writers, artists and other club members as friends and equals. He furnished the house with books and theatrical treasures, keeping rooms upstairs for himself.
The Players at 16 Gramercy Park South
