NYC Parks (at Stuyvesant Square Park)

In 1836 Peter Gerard Stuyvesant (1778-1847) and his wife Helen Rutherford reserved four acres of the family farm and sold it for five dollars to the City of New York as a public park. This remarkable gift may have been the most ambitious gesture of Peter Gerard Stuyvesant, the co-founder of the New York Historical Society and one of the richest men in America at his time. A public park in a rapidly expanding city was a priceless amenity. The creation of Stuyvesant Square was the catalyst to the development of an exceptional district within which Stuyvesant’s spirit still thrives.