WASHINGTON SQUARE FOUNTAIN

Washington Square Park is a cleaner, brighter, more easily surveilled park.  I miss the old fountain with its reassuring air that iconic monuments never move.  The fountain's new old abode (its current alignment with the Stanford White Washington Square arch citing an earlier era of its location)  is cleverly designed to seduce and prevent public performances.  Powerful sprays of water delight everyone and prevent anyone from lingering to rabble rouse or hypnotise a passerby.  As one of my students said to me: the park has a strange "open" feel to it.  Reminds me of what Paul Virilio says in his book on Speed and Politics about the scale of Haussman's boulevards in the heart of Paris designed to prevent another revolution.  The park's pedestrian pathways signal crowd control and armed vehicular manoeverability.  As a prominent destination for major protests, parades, demonstrations and vigils in the city of New York, the park's geography has always been a growth towards greater crowd control over the decades. Despite its history of military parades and its current heavily security determined design of large vehicular entry with its sweeping egresses and pathways, Washington Square Park remains charming if less mysterious.  It is a destination shorn of magic.  Perhaps time will reclaim the park's aura to weave new mystique onto its flattened landscape.