What better way to honor economist and urban planner Professor Chester Rapkin and…read morepreservationist/author Margot Gayle than by providing a corner of herringbone-patterned pavement and benches.
Chester was the dude whose 1962 study determined Soho's industrial lofts were too economically vibrant to be bulldozed for an expressway. He also coined the word SoHo! Margot made the coffee.
No, she was the founder of Friends of Cast Iron Architecture, which helped gained landmark status to Soho in 1973.
The "pocket park", so-called because "What's that guy doing with his hands in his pocket?!", officially opened in 2022 to give the dense neighborhood a little piece of nothingness, a quiet grounding space for pause and reflection amidst the intense street-level energy of the Lower East Side. Most people there were either on their phone, eating their lunch, or residents sleeping.
By the way, back in the early 1800s, it was home to Vauxhall Gardens, a major destination for the wealthy and laborers alike, who mingled at the three-acre carnival to see hear music, dance, and see petting zoos, vaudeville, wax figures,, and some rides (and maybe gambling). William Henry Lane, better known as "Master Juba invented tap dancing here. Which explains the ghosts of tap dancers I heard all night staying across the street at Solita Soho Hotel.
At its height (1805-1826), the Vauxhall Gardens covered 4th to 8th, Bowery to Broadway. But, in 1826, the land owner, John Jacob Astor carved it up for luxury townhouses to create Lafayette Place. God got revenge. His great grandson was the one in the Grand Staircase when the Glass dome crashed on the Titanic.
From 1852-1925, the Board of Education hosted public schools 17 and 47 at this site. But, in 1925, the school buildings were converted into commercial lofts, driven by urban obsolescence (death of the antiquated, crowded, and unsafe schoolhouse) and rise of the "Loft" economy to fulfill the city's growing light-industries that lost the wealthy residents (they moved uptown) but kept the high ceilings, large windows, and open floor plans, but lost the wealthy residents.
They were demolished in 1955. The commercial lots, not the wealthy residents. Somewhere Bernie Sanders just kicked a rock.
Until 2022, the lot, owned by Department of Environmental Protection, was used for access to critical subsurface pipes, sewers, and water infrastructure. The top was just a fenced off gravel pit. Basically the stage of Outsiders musical.