The twenty-five acre park, located on the southern tip of Manhattan, was almost as much a part of the Syrian neighborhood as the tenements on Washington Street. Not only did it provide the tenement dwellers with fresh air, something in short supply in their crowded and airless cubicles, but it was a children's playground and a marketplace, where men sold food and drinks from food carts. An immigrant could relax on the benches and dream of home or imagine the future, as they listened to the waves lapping the shore on three sides.