Famous Ankles

Jimmy Walker was one of NYC’s great (or perhaps “controversial” is a better term) mayors.  In Greenwich Village, they’ve got a small, but somewhat unusual park, named after him.

The park isn’t very big, just a few acres.  Among other things, it has a children’s playground and a ballfield.

Something I found interesting:  it also has a handball court.  You don’t see too many of these.

Oh, and a bocci/bocce ball court.  You see very few of these.

All pleasant, but not particularly unusual.

What’s unusual for a park is a grave.  Perhaps a mass grave as the place was a cemetery for quite some time.

Okay, it looks like a monument.  It has two plaques on it (okay, one plaque and one engraving, well, two ‘cuz one’s on the other side).

It reads, “This ground was used as a cemetery by Trinity Parish during the years 1834-1898.  It was made a public park by the city of New York in the year 1897-8.  This monument stood in the cemetery and was removed to this spot in the year 1898.”

The engraving on the monument reads:  “Here are interred the bodies of Eugene Underhill aged 20 years 7 months and 9 days and Frederick A. Ward aged 22 years 1 month and 16 days.  Who lost their lives by the falling of a building while engaged in the discharge of their duty as FIRE MEN on the first day of July MDCCCXXXIV.”  I believe that’s Roman numeral for 1834.

 That would make the monument one of the first in the cemetery.  I presume the “removed to this location” in the first plaque means somewhere on the block to this side of a relatively unused area, instead of perhaps in the middle of the ballfield.

-H

This entry was posted on March 22, 2008 at 7:58 am and is filed under Greenwich Village, Manhattan, Wanderings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.