NYC park near Cooper Union turning into horrendous area filled with rats, homeless

By Edward Era Barbacena

An East Village park near prestigious Cooper Union and across from luxury condos has become a trash-strewn, vermin-filled, homeless hangout, residents said.

“It’s disgusting!” Candy Schulman, 69, a 28-year neighborhood resident, told The Post of Cooper Triangle on Third Avenue.

“I feel outraged about the garbage and the rats. Every bench is taken up by the homeless and nobody is doing anything about it.”

Stuyvesant Town dweller John Murtha, 70, who walks his dog near the park, was equally angry.

“New York City is a Democratic blue state hellhole. It’s the bowels of hell,” he fumed. 

The Triangle is located just across the street from the Grace Church School and the pre-war Carl Fischer Building, which was erected in 1926 and converted in 2001 into 26 condos whose price tags range from $2 million to $16 million.

“It’s important for the park to be a valuable space and resource for the whole neighborhood,” said one 20-year resident of the condos who declined to give his name, “and it needs to be a clean and safe space.”

Earlier this month, the homeless stretched out on benches and garbage was strewn about the 7,400-square-foot pocket park. A load of empty beer bottles littered the space. A man who appeared to be a Cooper Union custodian placed at least one garbage bag next to the receptacles in the green space.

A nanny and her charge — a little girl — entered the park, but quickly left to play on the sidewalk instead.

The Parks Department said it cleans Cooper Triangle twice a day and has added a third visit in the evening, along with routine rat treatments, spokeswoman Megan Moriarty said.