NY -- NYC -- Verdi Square:
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- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- VERDI_161005_25.JPG: Erected by the Italian community through the efforts of Chev C Barsotti editor of the Italian daily newspaper Il - Progresso
Italo-Americano
October 12, 1906
- VERDI_161005_40.JPG: Verdi Square
Acres: 0.06
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (1813–1901), one of the world's most renowned composers, is immortalized by such operas as Aida, La Traviata, Otello, and Rigoletto, which are still performed regularly to great acclaim. This legacy is also captured in the Verdi Monument, created by Sicilian sculptor Pasquale Civiletti (1858–1952) in 1906. Made of Carrara marble and Montechiaro limestone, this statue depicts Verdi flanked by four of his most popular characters: Falstaff, Leonora of La Forza del Destino, Aida, and Otello.
The president of the Verdi Monument Committee, Carlo Barsotti (1850–1927), championed public recognition of pre-eminent Italians as a source of inspiration for New York's large Italian-American community. As founder and editor of Il Progresso Italo Americano, he used his newspaper to raise funds for this project by public subscription. Barsotti was instrumental in erecting this monument as well as those honoring Christopher Columbus (1892) in Columbus Circle, Giuseppe Garibaldi (1888) in Washington Square Park, Giovanni da Verazzano (1909) and Dante Alighieri (1921) in Dante Square.
The Verdi monument was unveiled on October 12, 1906, the 414th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America. The day began with a march of Italian societies from Washington Square to the site at Broadway and West 72nd Street. Over 10,000 people attended the unveiling, attesting to the significance of the occasion in uniting Italian-Americans in celebration of their cultural and artistic heritage. The sculptures were unveiled by Barsotti's grandchild who pulled a string that released a helium balloon, lifting the monument's red, white and green shroud (the colors of the Italian flag). As it peeled away, a dozen doves - concealed in its folds - were released into the air, and flowers cascaded from the veil upon the participants.
Verdi Square was acquired by Parks in 1887 and was named in 1921. The area was formerly a part of the old village of Harsenville located on Bloomingdale Road (now Broadway). It was a popular choice for summer villas in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In the early 1900s the square served as a gathering place for musicians, including Enrico Caruso and Arturo Toscanini.
In 1974, Verdi Square was designated a Scenic Landmark by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, one of only nine public parks to receive this distinction. The monument was restored in 1997 with funds from the Broadway/72nd Associates.
A permanent monument maintenance endowment has been established by Bertolli USA, Inc. Additional funds for new landscaping designed by Lynden Miller have been donated by Harry B. Fleetwood, and the Verdi Square landscape has been endowed in memory of James H. Fleetwood, a musician.
- Wikipedia Description: Verdi Square
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Verdi Square is a small triangle of land enclosed by a railing, located on Manhattan's Upper West Side, between 72nd Street and 73rd Street on the south and north, and Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue on the west and east. On the south the square fronts West 72nd Street; across the street to the south lies Sherman Square. On the north side, the park is enclosed by the Florentine Renaissance palazzo of the Central Savings Bank, now Apple Bank for Savings; that trapezoidal structure, with a vast vaulted Roman banking hall 65 feet high, was designed by York and Sawyer and built in 1926–28.
The 72nd Street New York City Subway station (1 2 3 trains) lies under the square. The Verdi Square entrance to the station in the square is one of only three remaining head houses on the IRT Broadway – Seventh Avenue Line.
History
In the center of Verdi Square stands a monument to the opera composer Giuseppe Verdi, erected in 1906. A statue of him by Pasquale Civiletti (1858–1952) stands at the top of it and statues of four of his most famous characters (Falstaff on the west side of the statue, Leonora of La forza del destino on the south side, Aida on the north side and Otello on the east side) are on the base below him. In the landscaping devised by Lynden Miller in 2004, flowers around the statue bloom in the spring and summer months.
In the 1960s and 1970s Verdi Square and Sherman Square were known by local drug users and dealers as "needle park" as depicted in The Panic in Needle Park (1971). Part of this was due to Verdi Square's location between the 72nd Street entrance to Central Park, which leads directly into Strawberry Fields (long known as a gathering place for illicit behavior), and the 72nd Street entrance to Riverside Park. In addition, the subway services that stopped at the 72nd Street station in the 1960s and 1970s made trips to both Harlem and the Bronx, both of which suffered from rampant crime during that time.
A new second entrance head house to the 72nd Street station, completed in 2002, has increased the pedestrian area to the west, taking in a former lane of Broadway traffic. The addition of the new head house has incorporated Verdi Square as part of the pedestrian complex. This, coupled with an increased NYPD presence in the new head house, has decreased the area's popularity among criminals and aided the gentrification of the neighborhood.
In 2006 a group of Upper West Side music lovers in partnership with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation created the annual Verdi Square Festival of the Arts: a series of three free outdoor September Sunday afternoon concerts presenting young musicians in repertoire ranging from opera to bluegrass. The festival brings music back to a square frequented by Caruso, Chaliapin, Toscanini, the Gershwin brothers and other famous musicians.
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