Paul Goldberger, a critic at The New Yorker and former critic at the Times, said this of Duane Park and its surrounding block in his book “The City Observed”:
This is the sort of place cities around the country struggle to create; New York has had it all along, and it is ignored [well, not by locals]. Duane Park is one of those accidents in a city which cannot be planned, and perhaps it is just as well that not too many people know about it, because this is one place that could never survive the madding crowd. All it is, is a little triangle left over by the oddly shaped intersections of Duane and Hudson Streets. Now, the city is filled with such intersections, and many of them try to be parks. This one succeeds where most of the others fail because, first it is surrounded – tightly – by superb buildings, all of which work together to create a coherent whole, and second, because it is furnished attractively, but utterly unpretentiously. It puts such artificial nineteenth century contraptions as Seattle’s Pioneer Square to shame.
And here in tribute is David Levanti’s great photograph of our little square.
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