Bughouse Square is the popular name for Washington Square Park. Just south of the Newberry, this park was Chicago’s most boisterous and radical free-speech space from the 1910s through the 1960s. Bohemians, socialists, atheists, and religionists of all persuasions mounted soapboxes, spoke to responsive, vocal crowds, and competed informally for attention and donations. The square’s core contributors, however, came from the Industrial Workers of the World union members whose radical views and wit made them perennial crowd favorites. In the park’s heyday during the 1920s and 1930s, as busloads of tourists ogled the scene, thousands of people gathered on summer evenings. World War II and a post-war crackdown against socialists and communists led to Bughouse Square’s decline and, by the mid-1960s, it had all but ceased to exist. The Newberry and community activists officially revived the spirit of the park with the Bughouse Square Debates in 1986.