Neither more nor less

Today our gaze above is on a green veil , a vague urban skyline and an umber , scarred bit of earth where once there was a perfectly satisfactory and functional fountain .

Someday when all work is done in this park , someone's obsession with their special mind's-eye view of a fountain , arch and avenue will have been made manifest ... with a fountain , an arch and 5th avenue all precisely in alignment .

In another time someone in another great city had an obsession for a special mind's-eye view of a great basilica . In Rome Il Duce demolished a whole section of Roman buildings , and the mystery that dwelled with them , to provide a broad , open and direct way of procession ( the Via della Conciliazione ) to , through and past a series of more-or-less aligned objects ... an obelisk , an elliptical colannade enclosing Saint Peter's Square and Saint Peter's Basilica .

Most who dwelled in Rome then and most who live around Washington Square Park today did not want their urban neighborhood changed radically to make real some elite's eccentric and tedious vision . But , here and there , then and now , political elites have the power and they seem to inevitably prefer obviously simple geometries inscribed large on grand scale . .