Taras Shevchenko Place is a street inNew York City named afterTaras Shevchenko, one of the greatestUkrainianpoets. Taras Shevchenko Place connects6th Street and7th Street betweenSecond andThird Avenues in theEast Village. It abuts the back of41 Cooper Square to the west.
The street was originally namedHall Street in 1830 and becameHall Place in 1855.[1] It was named afterCharles Henry Hall, a Harlem landowner who sold the property to the city on December 23, 1828.[2]
In the mid- to late 1970s, residents of the "Little Ukraine" section of the East Village and the United Ukrainian American Organizations of Greater New York organized a campaign to rename the street after Taras Shevchenko.[3] A resolution to rename the street "Taras Shevchenko Place" was introduced to theNew York City Council's Committee on Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs by Manhattan Councilman-at-largeHenry J. Stern in February 1978 and was adopted by the committee on April 5, 1978, before being sent to the full council for confirmation.[4]
Legislation to rename "Hall Place" as "Taras Shevchenko Place" was signed by MayorEd Koch on May 4, 1978.[5][6] Prior to the bill being signed into law, a temporary street sign for "Taras Shevchenko Place" had been erected in time for the dedication of the adjacentSaint George Ukrainian Catholic Church on April 23, 1978.[3][4] After the street was renamed, the St. George Ukrainian Post of theCatholic War Veterans announced proposed plans to close the street to traffic and convert it into a pedestrian plaza with additional trees and park benches.[6]
In February 2001, theCooper Union filed aUniform Land Use Review Procedure application with the city to 'de-map' the street—removing it from the city map—to incorporate part of the street into a new nine-story academic building that would replace the two-story Hewitt Building. The remaining portion of the street was proposed to be converted into a pedestrian walkway or plaza that would continue to commemorate Taras Shevchenko. The application was made as part of a larger plan by the college to renovate and modernize the facilities on its campus.[7][8][9][10] The proposal to de-map Taras Shevchenko Place was later withdrawn by the college after strong opposition from local residents.[11]
A "Hall Place" street sign was re-installed in 2010.[12][13]
Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861) was aUkrainian writer,painter andpolitical activist whose novels and poems, written inUkrainian, gave forceful expression to his countrymen'snational sentiment at a time when many aspects of theirculture, especially the language, were being suppressed by theRussian Empire. In one of his poems, he called for anindependent Ukrainian state to be led by a "Ukrainian Washington".
Media related toTaras Shevchenko Place at Wikimedia Commons40°43′42.17″N73°59′24.14″W / 40.7283806°N 73.9900389°W /40.7283806; -73.9900389