Bowling Green (New York City)

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Bowling Green, shown in a composite photograph taken from the steps of the U.S. Custom House looking north along Broadway.

Bowling Green is a small public park in Lower Manhattan at the foot of Broadway next to the site of the original Dutch fort of New Amsterdam. It is the oldest existing public park in New York City and the location of the Charging Bull bronze sculpture. Bowling Green marks the origin point for the ticker-tape parades that gave to the lowest section of Broadway its journalistic sobriquet the "Canyon of Heroes".

1 Description
2 History
3 Subway station
4 Notes
5 External links

[edit] Description

The park is a wedge-shaped plaza, formed by the splitting of Broadway into two forks, the eastern of which becomes Whitehall Street and the western of which becomes State Street after Broadway terminates. A portion of the park is a fenced-in grassy area with tables and chairs that are popular lunchtime destinations for local workers in the nearby Financial District. As of 2006 there is a fountain and a pool.

The south end of the plaza is bounded by the front entrance of Alexander Hamilton US Custom House, which currently houses the New York branch of the National Museum of the American Indian and the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan Division). Previously there was a public road along the south edge of the park, also called "Bowling Green", but since this area was needed for a modern entrance to the subway station, the road was eliminated and paved over with cobblestones. If weather permits, there are official food stands in this area once or twice a week, as well as many unofficial vendors selling grey-market goods (and occasionally pirated or knockoff goods).

[edit] History

Newly-planted trees in Bowling Green, ca 1905 (HABS photo)

The park has long been a center of activity in the city going back to the days of New Amsterdam, when it served as cattle market between 1638 and 1647 and parade ground. In 1675, the Common Council designated the “plaine afore the forte” for an annual market of “graine, cattle and other produce of the country”. In 1677 the city's first public well was dug in front of the old fort at Bowling Green.^[1] In 1733, the Common Council leased a portion of the parade grounds to three prominent neighboring landlords for a peppercorn a year, upon their promise to create a park that would be “the delight of the Inhabitants of the City” and add to its “Beauty and Ornament“; the improvements were to include a “bowling green” with “walks therein”.^[2] The surrounding streets were not paved with cobblestones until 1744.

In August 21, 1770, the British government erected a 4,000 pound (1,800 kg) gilded lead statue in the plaza depicting King George III mounted on horseback and dressed in Roman garb in the style of the Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius. The statue had been commissioned in 1766, along with a statue of William Pitt, from the prominent London sculptor Joseph Wilton.

Johannes Adam Simon Oertel. Pulling Down the Statue of King George III, N.Y.C., ca. 1859; a romantic version painted decades after the event, with historical inaccuracies including portraying the King in contemporary garb and placing women and children at the scene

With the rapid deterioration of relations with the mother country after 1770, the statue became a magnet for the Bowling Green protests;^[3] in 1773, the city passed an anti-graffiti and anti-desecration law to counter vandalism against the monument, and a protective cast-iron fence was built around it (which still exists as of 2006). On July 9, 1776, after the Declaration of Independence was read to Washington's troops at the current site of City Hall, a mob of local citizens rushed down Broadway to Bowling Green where they toppled the statue. The cast-iron crowns that topped sections of the surrounding fence were knocked off, as well. The event is one of the most enduring images in the city's history. According to folklore, the statue was chopped up and shipped to a Connecticut foundry to be made into some 40,000 patriot bullets. The statue's head was paraded about town on pike-staffs. Parts of the statue are preserved in the New-York Historical Society. The event has been depicted over the years in several works of art, including an 1859 painting by Johannes Adam Simon Oertel.

The revelries of Evacuation Day commemorated for many years in New York City the 1783 departure of the last British troops from the United States, following the success of the American Revolution. Legend has it that wounded British pride resulted in the nailing of a Union Jack to a greased flagpole in Bowling Green prior to the departure. After numerous attmepts by others, a boy was supposedly able to tear down the offending symbol and replace it with the Stars and Stripes before the British ships passed from view. George Washington made his triumphal return to the city the same day. Competitions to remove a Union Jack from a greased pole became part of annual celebrations in the following years.

Following the Revolution, the remains of the fort facing Bowling Green were demolished (1788) and part of the rubble used to extend the Battery towards the west. Elegant townhouses were built around the park, which became largely the private domain of the residents. By 1850, the general northward migration of residences in Manhattan led to the conversion of the residences into the shipping offices, resulting in full public access to the park.

The park suffered neglect after World War II, but was restored by the city in the 1970s and is now one of the most heavily traveled plazas in the city.

In 1989, the sculpture Charging Bull by Arturo Di Modica was installed in the park by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation after it had been confiscated by the police following its illegal installation on Wall Street. The sculpture has become one of the beloved and recognizable landmarks of the Financial District.

[edit] Subway station

Passengers exiting Bowling Green Station, May 2005.

Bowling Green is also the name of a New York City Subway station on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line, the entrances of which, opened in 1905, are located in and next to the plaza. Subway construction disrupted the remnants of the bowling green, which was removed to Central Park.

[edit] Notes

^ NYC Department of Environmental Protection, "New York City's Water Supply System: History".
^ Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham.
^ On 1 November 1765 a mob protesting the Stamp Act had marched down Broadway, carrying an effigy of the Royal Governor. They threw rocks and bricks at Fort George and at Bowling Green they burned the Governor's effigy as well as his coach, which had fallen into their hands.