Washington Square Village

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Completed in 1959 by Sasaki, Walker & Associates, the 1.5-acre garden at Washington Square Village was one of the first parking structure roof gardens in the country. The complex, based on the tower-in-the-park approach to urban housing touted by Le Corbusier, includes a secluded garden and playground space flanked by two seventeen-story, rectangular apartment buildings housing more than 1,200 families. The high-rise buildings, several of which feature dramatic vertical panels of primary-color glazed bricks, shield the garden of azaleas, evergreens, Japanese crabapple, higan cherry, willow trees, and allées of London plane trees. Herringbone-brick paths and multiple levels of platforms and seating areas, with rectilinear shapes that reflect the buildings around the garden are softened by the varied heights of the plantings and display the exceptional harmony of architecture, landscape architecture, and art at the site.