Peretz Square

What was here before?
This sliver of Manhattan marks the spot where the tangled jumble of lower Manhattan meets the regularity of the Commissioners’ Plan street grid. With the implementation of the Manhattan grid plan proposed in 1811, a new order of north-south avenues and east-west streets was imposed upon New York City. 

First Avenue opened to traffic in 1813, and by the end of the year, stretched from North Street (now Houston Street) to 25th Street. The new grid system did not align exactly with North Street, and with the opening of First Street in 1824, this small triangle was formed. Residential buildings lined the triangle for a century before being demolished.

How did this site become a park?
This site was acquired by NYC Parks on May 9, 1934, when the Board of Transportation issued a permit to Parks for “temporary use and occupation.” On November 23, 1952, Manhattan Borough President (later Mayor) Robert F. Wagner, Jr. dedicated Peretz Square, saying “[Peretz’s] writings gave hope and purpose to his people.”

Peretz Square is part of the Greenstreets program, a joint project of NYC Parks and the NYC Department of Transportation that began in 1986 and was revived in 1994 with the goal to convert paved street properties, such as triangles and malls, into green spaces. This park has been cared for by the Friends of Peretz Square.

Who is this park named for?
Isaac Loeb Peretz (1852-1915) was born in Zamosc, Poland to a religious family. As a young lawyer, he wrote primarily in Polish, and belonged to the Haskalah, or “enlightenment” movement, which called for a greater assimilation of Jews into the larger community. He published several works in Hebrew, including his first major poem, Li Omerim (‘They Tell Me’), but little in Yiddish, the vernacular language of Russian and Eastern European Jews. 

After a series of vicious pogroms in 1881, Peretz developed strong nationalistic leanings and an appreciation of the role that Yiddish could play in awakening a Jewish national identity. Accusations of radicalism in the late 1880s cost him his legal license, and from then on, he made his primary livelihood through his writing. 

Peretz’s first major work in Yiddish was his ironic poem Monish in 1888, published in Shalom Aleichem’s Di Yidishe Folksbibliotek. Moving to Warsaw in 1890, he became increasingly involved in the socialist movement and was imprisoned for several months in 1899. During this period, Peretz edited several Yiddish journals, and published several volumes in Hebrew, including a collection of love poems titled Ha-Ugav (‘The Harp’). He continued his socialist activity but, despite his hopes for a Jewish national awakening, did not join the Zionist movement (which was formally established in the late 19th century), believing that the future of the Jewish people lay rather in an enlightened Diaspora. 

Later in his career, he grew cautious about the future of socialism, addressing a socialist meeting with the prescient remark “I hope for your victory, but I fear and dread it.” Together with Shalom Aleichem and Mendele Mocher Seforim, Peretz pioneered several literary genres in Yiddish, including short stories and symbolic dramas. Upon his death in 1915, over 100,000 Polish Jews were said to have attended his funeral in Warsaw.

Many Eastern European Jews who immigrated to the United States between 1880 and 1920 settled in the Lower East Side. By 1920 an estimated 400,000 Jews lived in this area. Most were native Yiddish speakers, and many were devoted readers of the works of I.L. Peretz.