Place · United States
The history of New York City
Assembled from 6 dug tiles · 82 sourced records · 1624–2024 · last reviewed 16 October 2026
New York City's ground holds Times Square's lit crossroads, a Baptist church of radical causes, parks built over potter's fields and a vanished slum, and a garment-factory floor where 146 workers died. Farmland, burial ground, and world's fair site in turn, the city's shape has changed again and again over its holders.
These are the individual spots Strata has dug in New York City — not a guide to the town, but a record of what happened on particular ground.
Digs in New York City
A garment-factory building, now NYU classroomsThis point marks the Brown Building on Washington Place, a ten-story building that once housed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Brown Building
1776–2024 A park built over a demolished slum
This point sits inside Columbus Park in Manhattan's Chinatown, a public park laid out where the Five Points slum once stood. Columbus Park
1624–2019 An 1893 Italian Renaissance church, still an active congregation
Across Washington Square Park stands a Baptist church known as much for radical art and activism as for worship. Judson Memorial Church
1679–2002 A Manhattan park built over a burial ground
This park sits where Broadway and the old Bowery Road once met, and roughly 20,000 bodies still lie beneath it. Union Square
1672–2023 A Theater District crossroads
This point sits at Times Square, the bowtie-shaped plaza where Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and 42nd Street cross in Midtown Manhattan. Times Square
1780–2024 A 9.6-acre park, once a graveyard and a world's fair site
This point sits in Bryant Park, a privately managed public park in Midtown Manhattan, between the New York Public Library and Sixth Avenue. Bryant Park
1776–2015
New York City in layers
Minetta Brook, a stream that wound through what is now Greenwich Village, no longer exists on the surface; it was built over as the neighborhood urbanized. GNIS
1624-1664
The spot you're standing on belonged to the Dutch colonial town of New Amsterdam from 1624 until the English took control in 1664 and renamed it New York. FamilySearch
1672
The last Dutch director-general of New Netherland, Peter Stuyvesant, died in 1672 and is buried at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, a short walk northeast. Wikidata
18th century
Legend holds that the old elm at the park's northwest corner was used to hang criminals and conspirators before the square became a park. Wikipedia - Hangman's Elm
1776
After the disastrous Battle of Long Island, George Washington's troops raced across this exact ground fleeing the British. Bryant Park Official Website - History
1776-1897
Before it was absorbed into Manhattan as a neighborhood in 1898, Greenwich Village existed as its own village jurisdiction from 1776. FamilySearch
late 1700s–early 1800s
Before it was a square, this ground was farmland owned by militia general John Morin Scott, later bought up by John Jacob Astor as the city spread north. Wikipedia
1789
Built in 1789, the Edward Mooney House is the oldest surviving freestanding rowhouse in Manhattan, a few minutes' walk from this corner. Wikidata
1790s
Victims of a 1790s yellow fever epidemic, perhaps up to a thousand of them, were interred in this same potter's field near where the George Washington statue stands today. Bowery Boys History
late 1790s–1807
From the late 1790s Union Square was a burial ground for the poor and unclaimed, and an estimated 20,000 bodies may still lie beneath the park. Bowery Boys History
from 1798
Washington Square was used as a public burial ground starting in 1797, and thousands of the city's dead, many from yellow fever epidemics, still lie beneath the grass. FamilySearch - Washington Square Park Cemetery
19th century
The Croton Reservoir and the buried Minetta Brook both once ran through this part of Manhattan before the city paved and piped them away entirely. GNIS - Minetta Brook / Croton Reservoir
1803
Jonas Phillips, an American merchant who died in 1803, is buried in the First Shearith Israel Graveyard, New York's oldest Jewish cemetery, a short walk south. Wikidata
1808
After the freshwater Collect Pond was buried to make Pearl Street in 1808, the sinking landfill gave off foul odors that drove property values down and created the slum that became Five Points. Wikipedia - Columbus Park (Manhattan)
1811–1815
The land was farmed by families like the Spinglers and Watts before surveyors in 1811 carved out a triangular commons where Broadway met the old Bowery Road. Wikipedia
c. 1820s-1880s
From the 1820s, the intersection of Worth and Baxter Streets was the heart of Five Points, a crowded immigrant slum of Irish, Italian, and free Black residents. Wikipedia - Five Points, Manhattan
1823–1840
From 1823 to 1840 this spot was a burial ground for the city's poor, and later construction turned up over 100,000 skeletons, likely from epidemic victims buried stacked on top of each other. Bryant Park History Blog - SHU
1827
A painting titled The Five Points, from 1827, shows the neighborhood as it stood before Riis's photographs and the demolitions that followed. Wikidata (art)
1829-1870s
The New York Marble Cemetery, about 600 meters off, holds civil engineer Benjamin Wright, tobacco magnate Pierre Lorillard II, and politician James Tallmadge Jr., among others buried there in the early 1800s. Wikidata burials
1830s-1860s
The Dead Rabbits, an Irish-American street gang notorious for brawling with rivals, formed near the present-day intersection of Worth, Baxter, and Columbus Streets. Wikipedia - Dead Rabbits
1831–1832
In 1832 developer Samuel Ruggles convinced the city to enlarge and rename the commons Union Square, shaping the rectangular park seen today. Wikipedia
from 1831
New York University, founded in 1831, now owns and uses the Brown Building as part of its Greenwich Village campus. Wikidata
1842–1900
The Croton Distributing Reservoir, a man-made lake behind fifty-foot granite walls, supplied the city's drinking water here until it was torn down in 1900 to make way for the New York Public Library. Wikipedia
1842
In 1842, rioters attacked the tavern of Constantine Donoho, a Five Points patronage boss, at Baxter Street, a few steps from where you stand. New York Songlines
Questions about New York City
What is New York City known for historically?
Among much else, it is known for Times Square, named on April 8, 1904 when Longacre Square was renamed for The New York Times, and for the annual New Year's Eve ball drop atop One Times Square, begun in 1907 after fireworks were banned downtown.
What happened at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory?
On March 25, 1911, a fire at the factory, which occupied the top three floors of the Brown Building on Greene Street, killed 146 workers, including Teresina Saracino. The factory owners were tried for manslaughter and acquitted, and the disaster led New York to rewrite its safety laws.
Why are there bodies under Union Square and Bryant Park?
Both were once potter's fields. Union Square held the city's poor and unclaimed dead, including yellow fever victims, from the late 1790s, with an estimated 20,000 bodies remaining beneath it; Bryant Park's ground, a potter's field from 1823 to 1840, later yielded more than 100,000 skeletons when uncovered.
What happened at Columbus Park before it was a park?
The ground was once Five Points, centred on Worth, Baxter, and Park Streets and reckoned the most notorious slum in New York City. The city demolished 130 crowded buildings there in 1895 and opened Mulberry Bend Park in 1897, renaming it Columbus Park in 1911.
What is Judson Memorial Church known for?
Built in 1893 by Edward Judson as a memorial to his missionary father, with design by Stanford White and stained glass by John La Farge, the church has hosted a free health clinic from 1922 to 1950, the Judson Dance Theater in the early 1960s, and the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion, formed in 1967 to help women before abortion was legal.
What stood on Bryant Park's ground before the park?
Besides its time as a potter's field, the ground held a large reservoir from 1842 to 1900 and America's first world's fair, the Crystal Palace, which rose and burned between 1853 and 1858 alongside a 315-foot tower. The New York Public Library's main branch opened on the park's edge in 1911.