The Washington Arch Daniella Zalcman for The Wall Street Journal

Several months ago my daughter, knowing I'm perpetually poised somewhere between eager and desperate for story ideas, suggested I do a piece about the Washington Square Arch. She'd heard there was a room inside the arch and thought it might make an interesting article.

I don't think I laughed in her face and told her she was a damn fool—I come from that generation of parenting, unlike my own parents, that believes our children are so emotionally fragile they need relentless moral and intellectual support, lest they break into a million little pieces—or maybe I did laugh in her face, because I thought the idea too ridiculous to pursue.

Its interior stairwell Daniella Zalcman for The Wall Street Journal

I'd visited Washington Square dozens of times (indeed, one of my favorite warm-weather pastimes, when I'm not spending the evening in Central Park with a good friend and a well-disguised bottle of elixir, is to do the same on a series of benches on the eastern side of Washington Square Park; its interminable landscape renovation last summer put a decided crimp in my style) and never noticed any door in the arch.

But Friday morning I indeed found myself inside the arch, and not just inside it, having entered through a small side door in the arch's western leg, but climbing a 102-step spiral staircase toward its summit. My guide was John Krawchuk, the New York City Parks Department's director of historic preservation, and the project manager for the arch's 1997-98 and 2001-04 renovations. Mr. Krawchuk preferred to play down the Parks Department's herculean efforts to cleanse the structure of graffiti, and its success at keeping it off using anti-graffiti coating, for fear that spotlighting their exertions might tempt vandals to deface it afresh.

A small door in the arch's western facade provides entry. Daniella Zalcman for The Wall Street Journal

"We want to be a little careful," he said. "We don't want people to say, 'Let's go tag the arch!'" But I'm reasonably confident that the intersection of folks with a passion for defiling public property and readers of this page is relatively small, and I think the city deserves applause for successfully removing the crap (and perhaps kudos also should go to the general populace for resisting the urge to deface it anew). As goes the Washington Square Arch (which, Mr. Krawchuk cautioned me, is officially known as "the Washington Arch"), so goes the city. "The messages were fascinating as we were taking off layers of paint," he recalled, referring to the graffiti removal, as we ascended the claustrophobic staircase. "Vietnam-era stuff."

The arch, which was constructed to celebrate the centennial of George Washington's inauguration and had its ribbon-cutting in 1895, was designed pro bono by Stanford White. The stairs and the vaulted attic to which we were heading were constructed by Guastavino, the same firm that did the terracotta tile ceiling in Grand Central's Oyster Bar, though the attic's ceiling remains unadorned brick.

"At one point this was a Parks office," Mr. Krawchuk explained, but obviously not an ideal one given the calisthenics required to reach it. "There was a lot of junk up here. We try to keep it clean."

Parks Department head preservationist John Krawchuk Daniella Zalcman for The Wall Street Journal

At the moment the space, illuminated by several small skylights, is empty except for the stockpile of light bulbs and fluorescents used to light the exterior. One of the triumphs of the renovation is that the roof no longer leaks. "Stanford White famously complained about it," Mr. Krawchuck said. "He swabbed it with tobacco juice because he wanted to even out the discoloration of the arch."

But we still hadn't reached the top. The staircase continued to the roof, accessible through skylight doors installed during the 2005 renovation. "We don't allow people up here," the historic preservationist explained. "The stairway is quite dangerous and the roof is quite fragile. If we allowed the public up here, the roof would fail quite quickly."

That's a pity because the view from the top of the arch is unparalleled, quite literally at a crossroads of the city's history. What is now Washington Square Park was originally a potter's field. In fact, human remains were uncovered during the excavation for the arch. It was used as a parade ground until the 1840s. Stanford White modeled the arch after the Arc de Triomphe, though the Parisian version obviously suffers from the lack of the New York version's statues of George Washington at war and peace adorning the north side. On the other hand, tourists can summit the French memorial arch and buy cute and affordable models of it in all sizes.


Mr. Krawchuk said that in 1917 a group of "Bohemians" led by the artists Marcel Duchamp and John Sloan and the poet Gertrude Drick broke into the arch and climbed to the roof. "They had a picnic and a party and drank tea late into the night," he said, though one suspects stronger beverages might also have been involved. "Gertrude Drick read a proclamation declaring the free and independent state of Greenwich Village. Sloan did an etching of them all huddled here in the early morning hours."

I wondered whether the cops ever requested access to the roof to spy on the park's indigenous drug dealers, one of whom greeted me warmly as I departed and headed to my next appointment. But Mr. Krawchuk said no, and not just because they were concerned about the roof springing leaks. "There are plenty of cameras around the park," he explained.