For what it's worth, when I moved to NYC I was surprised that there were so many parks. I haven't looked into the history in order to confirm this, but it looks

For what it's worth, when I moved to NYC I was surprised that there were so many parks. I haven't looked into the history in order to confirm this, but it looks to me like as rectangular buildings were constructed on pieces of land the extra "corners" got turned into parks; resulting in tiny triangular parks all over the place.