4,000-strong crowd descend on New York park overnight to support demonstration against financial greed and corruption

Occupy Wall Street protesters celebrated after plans to clean up the lower Manhattan park they have occupied for more than a month were cancelled at the last minute amid a tense standoff with police.

The announcement was made at around 6:20am on Friday, some 40 minutes before workers were scheduled to enter Zuccotti Park. Demonstrators who have camped close to Wall Street cheered as the news was announced and chanted: "The whole world is watching."

An estimated 4,000-strong crowd had descended on the park overnight to support the demonstration. New York police said they detained 14 people after the decision to postpone the closure.

The arrests appear to have come as a small group of protesters tried to march on to Wall Street, home to the New York Stock Exchange, which is under heavy police protection.

"This development has emboldened the movement and sent a clear message that the power of the people has prevailed against Wall Street," Occupy Wall Street said.

"I think its pretty typical that when the police are tested, they don't like it very much," said Christianne Karefa-Johnson, 19, who was attending the protest for the first time. "But I think the people arrested were trying to rile things up."

In a radio interview mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has been critical of the demonstration, said the decision to postpone the clean up was made by Brookfield, the park's owner.

"Yesterday, as of 8 o'clock at night, they were going ahead to do it, but, as of midnight, they called and said they wanted to postpone the cleaning operations," he said.

"My understanding is that Brookfield got lots of calls from many elected officials threatening them and saying … 'We're going to make your life more difficult,'" he said on his weekly radio show.

Bloomberg, whose partner Diana Taylor is on Brookfield's board of directors, said his staff were under strict orders not to pressure the company.

Last week Bloomberg accused protesters of destroying jobs. "What they're trying to do is take away the jobs of people working in the city, take away the tax base that we have," the mayor said. "We're not going to have money to pay our municipal employees or clean out the blocks or anything else."

Bob Ballard, 58, drove from California to Washington to attend the Occupy protest there, before travelling down to New York.

He said: "I was in Freedom plaza in Washington when we were going to be evicted from there, but we weren't. There were far too many people here for them to close it. We have enough numbers, they won't do anything."

Donald Grove, 51, who said he had been involved in demonstrating since the 1970s, said the march was a "great idea" but he added that people involved in the action "may not be used to marching".

"People are getting excited, going out on the streets and they move too fast. They need to stick together. But this is what it is. These people have done something outstanding here."

"Late last night, we received notice from the owners of Zuccotti Park – Brookfield Properties – that they are postponing their scheduled cleaning of the park, and for the time being withdrawing their request from earlier in the week for police assistance during their cleaning operation," the deputy mayor, Caswell Holloway, said.

"Brookfield believes they can work out an arrangement with the protesters that will ensure the park remains clean, safe, available for public use and that the situation is respectful of residents and businesses downtown."

New York's arrests came as police in riot gear arrested dozens of protesters in Denver, herded near the Colorado state Capitol and dismantled their encampment. In Trenton, New Jersey, demonstrators were also ordered to remove tents from a protest encampment.