With an old-world charm that makes you wonder about ‘what used to be’ and a carrier of conundrums as it spans over Washington Square Park to Union Square, University Place is a thoroughfare in Lower Manhattan, New York City that is a hub to hopeful students and diverse strangers. University Place is what comes to my mind as my thoughts venture out in search of significant boulevards in New York that make it great.
As I entered the avenue with soothing bright lights, which are fortunately not as bright as Times Square, I started my short, anticipated walk down the road. To my right was the Deutsches Haus that belongs to New York University, and to my left was a string of grocery stores and ramen restaurants that present contrast at the first glance. A walk along the lanes of the Deutsches Haus transported me to Europe, with short buildings laden with bricks, decorated with long, arched windows, and complimented with flora around them. As I saw people sitting inside the buildings right by window, looking at the passers-by and engaging in what looks like multi-cultural conversations, a sense of safety is felt around the block.
With a further walk down University Place, the miscellany can be felt and seen with each step. The scent of diverse, ethnic food with the vision of NYU and New School students strolling in the streets with pride and joy, University Place has a way of making strangers feel at home. People can be seen engaging in conversations on the outside stairways on the higher floors of buildings, which give enough room for the Sun to illuminate the street, and a continuous source of security to the pedestrians. As the place mainly caters to the needs of college-goers, bars and pubs are an important source of nightlife. The bar owners, the people sitting outside such restaurants, and the people living on the higher floors provide due surveillance to the avenue. As NYU lends security to the area, the active nightlife spread across the thoroughfare calls for ultimate safety throughout the day. Strangers interact as they step inside various ethnic restaurants, bodegas, grocery stores, chains of banks, bars, movie theatre, and the parks that confine University Place on both the ends.
Another striking factor that makes University Place great, and a good representative for New York City, is the contact that is maintained here. Thinking about the importance of ‘balanced contact’ as a principle governing the greatness of a city, the term, ‘the Washington Square Park conundrum,’ as told to me by a friend who goes to NYU and was currently giving me company, Washington Square Park is the ultimate hub for NYU students and is mostly populated by them, too. The catch is that while the park is surrounded by buildings owned by NYU and its security, and other academic and residential edifices, it is still public. With a combination of private grounds around the park, and the public space, that is, the park itself, a sense of balance can be observed.
In other instances, the feeling of togetherness can be experienced as strangers and college-goers of all backgrounds and races help each other in times of need, which was, in this case, sharing umbrellas on a rainy day. A proper extent of privacy and cordialness is maintained between neighbors and such, as the fairly fast pace of the lifestyle at University Place lends enough time for healthy small talk, instead of long, drawn-out conversations with strangers. The sidewalks are populous with pedestrians at all times of the day. The well-planned streetscape lends itself as an essential means for surveillance, meetings, and neighborhood activities, with prominent demarcations between public life and private life.
At University Place, strangers from all ages, backgrounds, and races maintain paramount safety and contact, along with the the trustworthiness and security that NYU lends to it. The youthfulness and constant brouhaha of the public characters and passers by on the sidewalks make it not only a special place in itself, but also a profound reflection of New York City as an incredible and unique place. University Place is, in my opinion, an illustrious example of a streetscape that helps New York City tick all the right boxes.
