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Overview – A market square in the 19th century, Tompkins Square Park came into being when Peter Stuyvesant's ancestors bequeathed the area to the city with the understanding that it would always be "public property." (The name is in tribute to New York governor Daniel Tompkins, who freed the slaves in the state during the late 1820s.) – – Features – This grand East Village park sports one of the city's best dog runs and is generally in splendid condition--thanks to a renovation which erased all traces of the infamous clashes that occurred here between squatters and…