Leg-in-Boot Square (Vancouver)

 interesting place, plaza

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Leg-in-Boot Square is the centrepiece of Phase One of what was the most extensive and visionary urban redevelopment scheme in Canada up to its time (mid-1970's). It is a vehicle-free cobblestone and brick plaza.

In its centre is a set of lines, the primary one which extends from a fountain to the water, and which points via a permanent sightline to the Lions (or Two Sisters) Mountains (and intersecting the old Vancouver Stock Exchange). The remaining twelve lines which emanate from a circle in the middle of the square are aligned to the orientation of Vancouver's street grid.

There are two young trees on the square which were planted when one of the original trees was diseased and both were cut down in a case of the city engineering services playing the doctor who amputed the wrong leg, which may have been what happened to the eponymous leg which was found in a boot in False Creek in the late 19th century and hung in front of the police station for two weeks, never to be claimed.