- No structure is more synonymous with Greenwich Village than the Washington Square Arch, but it didn’t always symbolize a gateway to the Village. The arch, created in 1889, celebrates the centennial of George Washington’s inauguration.
- In 1892, the arch, originally made of wood and plaster, was replaced with a permanent marble designed by renowned New York architect Stanford White.
- The arch stands 77 feet tall and was fashioned after Paris’s 164-foot-tall Arch de Triomphe. The arch features two statues of Washington, focusing on war and peace.
- One statue, created by A. Sterlin Calder, depicts Washington as President, accompanied by Wisdom and Justice.
- The Book in his hand features the Latin phrase “Exitus Acta Probat” meaning “the end justifies the deed.”
- White was a major late-19th-century starchitect. He also designed Judson Church and the original Madison Square Garden.
- White’s 1906 murder, called “The Murder of the Century,” occurred during dinner on the roof of his Madison Square Garden.
- The arch is hollow and contains a staircase to the roof.
- Rumor has it a Civil War veteran lived undetected in the arch until someone noticed his laundry hanging from the top!
- The Arch was also the site of a so-called “bohemian coup.”
- In 1917 a group of artists, including the infamous urinal artist/Dadaist Marcel Duchamp, snuck into the arch and declared that it was now “The Free and Independent Republic of Washington Square,” thus breaking from the “gilded capitalist” city. Nothing much came these Arch Conspirators’ bold moves except for a lovely drunken picnic and a subsequent poetry reading
