Tompkins Square Park: The Last 40 Years In New York City

Tompkins Square Park sits centrally inside Manhattan’s East Village, serving the downtown neighborhood as a cultural hub for the diverse communities of skaters, punks, squatters, hippies and artists that have coexisted within the park’s boundaries for generations. 

Throughout the decades, the park has been an epicenter of political action and demonstrations against gentrification, a stage for countless live concerts, the training grounds for skaters, and a home base to some of New York’s most influential artists and cultural icons. From the Tompkins Square Park police riot of 1988, to the community rally to Save Tompkins in 2019, the grounds have been a key place within New York. 

In celebration of the historic space, Living Proof presents “Tompkins Square Park: Forty Years”, a book featuring a collection of photography spanning four decades of life and culture in the park documented by Clayton Patterson, Cheryl Dunn, Alain Levitt, Adam Zhu and Nolan Zangas.