Officially Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Park at Manhattan Square, Manhattan Square Park is the 5-acre urban park you have reached. This 5-acre (2.0 ha) urban park in downtown Rochester was designed by Lawrence Halprin and Lawrence Halprin & Associates in 1971–1972 and opened in 1974 as the centerpiece of the city's Southeast Loop urban renewal plan. Before the park, this site held tenement housing until the city cleared approximately 60 acres for urban renewal in 1968.
Halprin organized the space into six distinct zones set at a 45-degree angle to the surrounding street grid, giving you a geometry that still surprises the eye. Pause in the sunken concrete plaza and imagine the bustle around the 2,000-seat amphitheater and the sound of the waterfall fountain. Look up to the steel, scaffold-like frame with its viewing platforms and observation tower that invite you to climb mentally as well as physically.
In 2013 the city formally designated this place Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Park at Manhattan Square, a new name layered over the original Halprin vision. Halprin organized this space into six distinct zones set at a 45-degree angle to the street grid, the largest park within the Inner Loop, with The Strong National Museum of Play beside you.