Union Square is an important and historic intersection in New York City, located where Broadway and the former Bowery Road now 4th Avenue. Union Square is one of the largest hubs of links in the New York City subway system. Although Union Square celebrates a history of social activism the name came from the early 19th century and celebrates neither the federal union nor labor unions but rather denotes the fact that “here was the union of the two principal thoroughfares of the island” and the confluence of several trolley lines, as in the term “union station.” Today it is bounded by 14th Street to the south, Union Square West on the west side, 17th Street on the north, and on the east Union Square East, which links together Broadway and Park Avenue South to Fourth Avenue and the continuation of Broadway. It is a hub of fine restaurants and shopping .The Park it self is under the aegis of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.
The park has historically been the start or the end point for many political demonstrations. In April 1861, soon after the fall of Fort Sumter . The fort is best known as the site upon which the shots initiating the American Civil War were fired. Union Square was the site of a patriotic rally of perhaps a quarter of a million people that is thought to have been the largest public gathering in North America at the time.
Union Square was and is a frequent gathering point for radicals,rockers and assorted “trouble makers” of all stripes to make speeches or demonstrate. On September 5, 1882, in the first Labor Day celebration, a crowd of at least 10,000 workers paraded up Broadway and filed past the reviewing stand at Union Square. Although the park was known for its union rallies and for the large 1861 gathering in support of Union troops,
Union share is also the convergence of many neighborhoods ,the Flatiron District to the north, Chelsea to the west, Greenwich Village to the south, and Gramercy to the east. Many buildings of The New School are near the square,as well as several dormitories of New York University.
Union Square is noted for its impressive equestrian statue of George Washington, modeled by Henry Kirke Brown and unveiled in 1856, the first public sculpture erected in New York since the equestrian statue of George III in 1770 and the first American equestrian sculpture cast in bronze. Other statues in the park include the Marquis de Lafayette, modeled by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi and dedicated at the Centennial, July 4, 1876, Abraham Lincoln, modeled by Henry Kirke Brown (1870), and the James Fountain (1881), a Temperance fountain with the figure of Charity who empties her jug of water, aided by a child; it was donated by Daniel Willis James and sculpted by Adolf Donndorf. Newer addition are a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the southwest corner of the park, added in 1986, to mark Union Square’s history of social activism.
