Union Square is a historic intersection and surrounding neighborhood in Manhattan, New York City, United States, located where Broadway and the former Bowery Road – now Fourth Avenue[4] – came together in the early 19th century.

Union Square Park also contains an assortment of art, including statues of George Washington, Marquis de Lafayette, Abraham Lincoln, and Mahatma Gandhi.

The northwestern corner of the park site contained 1 acre (0.40 ha) of land owned by the Manhattan Bank, which supposedly was a "refuge" for businesses during New York City's yellow fever epidemics.

Several city officials objected that Union Place was too large and requested that it be "discontinued", and in 1814, the New York State Legislature acted to downsize the area by making 14th Street the southern boundary.

The Everett House on the corner of 17th Street and Fourth Avenue (built 1848, demolished 1908) was for decades one of the city's most fashionable hotels.

[24] In the early years of the park, a fence surrounded the square's central oval planted with radiating walks lined with trees.

[citation needed] Initially, the square was largely residential: the Union League Club first occupied a house loaned for the purpose by Henry G. Marquand at the corner of 17th Street and Broadway.

After the Civil War the neighborhood became largely commercial, and the square began to lose social cachet at the turn of the twentieth century, with many of the old mansions being demolished.

The last of the neighborhood's free-standing private mansions, Peter Goelet's at the northeast corner of 19th Street, made way for a commercial building in 1897.

[citation needed] The Rialto, New York City's first commercial theater district, was located in and around Union Square beginning in the 1870s.

The 1939 WPA Guide to New York City said that by the 1920s, the "south side of Fourteenth Street became virtually an ex-tension of Greenwich Village".

[33]: 2 [6] Real estate activity resumed in the late 1920s, and according to a 1928 piece in The New York Times, “several smaller operations are planned or are under way in the neighborhood".

[40] As part of the Dual Contracts, workers began constructing the 14th Street–Union Square station, on the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company's Broadway Line, under the park in 1913.

The station was built using an open cut method, and a 120-foot-wide (37 m) strip of land, running diagonally through Union Square Park, was closed and excavated.

[47] To make way for a further expansion of the Union Square subway station, the park was raised by about 3 feet (0.91 m) as part of a renovation during the late 1920s.

[48][49] The plans, announced in June 1929, also included relocating several statues and building a concert plaza with a bandstand at the park's northern end.

[69] Union Square was named a National Historic Landmark in 1997, primarily to honor it as the site of the first Labor Day parade.

[3][70][71] Mayor Rudy Giuliani announced plans in early 1998 to spend $2.6 million on expanding the park, following advocacy from area residents.

[96] Union Square contains a large equestrian statue of U.S. President George Washington, modeled by Henry Kirke Brown and unveiled in 1856.

[97] The Marquis de Lafayette, at Union Square East and 16th Street, was modeled by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and dedicated in 1876, the 100th anniversary of U.S.

Legend by the Swedish artist Alexander Klingspor, featuring a New York sewer alligator, was unveiled in the square by Queen Silvia of Sweden.

[104][105] A double line of trees is planted along 17th Street, and a corresponding plaque installed nearby, as a monument to victims of the Armenian genocide.

Today, the Union Square Greenmarket, the best known of the markets, is held year-round on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays between 8 am and 6 pm.

[117] The W New York Union Square, part of the W Hotels chain, is located at the park's northeast corner, in the former Guardian Life building.

[118] Additionally, the Hyatt Union Square New York hotel is located at the park's southeast corner, in a former post office.

In 1865, the recently formed Irish republican Fenian Brotherhood came out publicly and rented Dr. John Moffat's brownstone rowhouse at 32 East 17th Street, next to the Everett House hotel facing the north side of the square, for the capitol of the government-in-exile they declared.

[120][121] 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.

[122] In 1893, Emma Goldman took the stage at Union Square to make her "Free Bread" speech to a crowd of overworked garment workers.

[125] Union Square has been used as a platform to raise awareness about the Black Lives Matter movement, such as during the George Floyd protests in New York City in 2020.

White collar workers were among the worst paid in Great Depression-era New York City, with union memberships being highly discouraged by store managers and often seen as fireable offenses.