West 4th Street Courts

West 4th Street Courts became a basketball mecca in Manhattan and beyond, centered on “the Cage,” a smaller-than-regulation court known for intense pick-up games and a popular annual tournament that draws players from around the world, with several NBA players having begun there. The site emerged from efforts to impose a more orderly street system on the irregular West Village, whose streets had developed haphazardly from colonial marshland and farmland into a dense residential, commercial, and industrial neighborhood. Although the 1811 Commissioners’ Plan established Manhattan’s grid, it left the crooked streets of Greenwich Village largely unchanged until the rise of automobile traffic led city planners to extend Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Avenues southward for improved north-south movement. Before the 1920s this location marked the end of Sixth Avenue, and as the avenue was widened and pushed south of Houston toward Canal Street in connection with traffic needs and access to the Holland Tunnel, the city acquired this block bounded by Avenue of the Americas, West 3rd, and West 4th Streets. The remaining land was turned over to Parks on June 8, 1934, the playground opened on October 14, 1935, Sixth Avenue was renamed Avenue of the Americas in 1945 at the suggestion of Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia to honor Pan-American ideals and principles, and the site was formally assigned to Parks on August 27, 1953.

New York, New York · United States