Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Tompkins Square Park on New York's Lower East Side has been a key theater and barometer of urban social struggles in the United States since its inception in the antebellum era. Riots and uprisings centered around the park took place in 1857, 1863 ( Civil War draft riots ), 1874, 1877 (national railroad strike), 1967, and 1988. After each one, city authorities moved to redesign the park as a means of containing popular struggle. Each time, resistance reemerged as new waves of immigrants and cycles of displacement brought new social pressures. Tompkins Square Park was completed in 1834, and it was anticipated that it would be used by the wealthy. But the expansion of the wealthy district was suddenly halted by an economic depression in 1837. Instead, Irish and German immigrants moved into the area around Tompkins Square. The area became known as Dry Dock, as it was populated by workers employed by the shipbuilding industry along the East River as the economy recovered. Recovery brought work, at least, but living conditions in Dry Dock were abysmal, with large families crammed into small, unventilated rooms. With the next economic crunch, in 1857, the Dry Dock residents were thrown out of work and for the first of many times Tompkins Square Park was transformed into a forum for public debate and protest. Unemployed Dry Dock workers demonstrated in the park for the city government ... log in or subscribe to read full text