Washington Square Arch

In late 1916 or January 1917 (reports vary), six residents of Greenwich Village, including painter John Sloan and Dadaist/chess expert Marcel Duchamp, managed to get inside the Washington Square Arch (there’s a door at the base of one of the piers) and make their way up a spiral staircase of masonry to the top. There, they strung up paper lanterns, fired toy pistols and declared the Village an independent state, free from the tyranny of uptown. They’d been drinking, of course, but they may have been onto something.