That arch. White marble, seventy-seven feet tall, modeled after the Arch of Titus in Rome. Stanford White designed it — the most famous architect in New York, a man who will come up again later for reasons that have nothing to do with architecture.
It started as a temporary wooden arch for the centennial of Washington's inauguration. People liked it so much they raised money to build a permanent one, in marble, because this is New York and nothing temporary stays temporary unless it's affordable housing.
Now look down.
You are standing on top of approximately twenty thousand bodies.
This park was a potter's field from seventeen ninety-seven to eighteen twenty-five — a mass burial ground for yellow fever victims, executed prisoners, and the unnamed poor. They're still here. During a renovation in two thousand nine, construction crews found a tombstone dated seventeen ninety-nine about ten feet below the surface. They also found coffin fragments, human remains, and — most unsettlingl
y — evidence that some coffins had been stacked three deep to save space.
The city didn't build a park here because it was a nice open space. They built a park here because they ran out of room for bodies and decided a lawn would be less depressing.
Look at the streets around you. Notice anything strange? They don't line up. They curve. They intersect at weird angles. There's a reason for that,
