Bowling Green Manhattan: NYC’s Oldest 1733 Public Park, King George Statue & Charging Bull

1. Introduction: The Cradle of New York Civic Space

At the southern foot of Broadway, where the bustling commercial avenue tapers before Battery Park, sits a small teardrop-shaped green space encircled by an ornate iron fence. Known as Bowling Green, this half-acre park is the oldest municipal park in New York City, officially established by the Common Council in 1733.

More than any other parcel of land on Manhattan Island, Bowling Green is the physical nexus where Dutch colonial commerce, British imperial power, American revolutionary defiance, and modern global financial symbolism intersect. Here, Peter Minuit negotiated with the Lenape; here, Sons of Liberty tore down the gilded statue of an English tyrant to cast bullets for the Continental Army; and here, millions of international travelers gather annually to rub the bronze horns of Arturo Di Modica's Charging Bull.

Framed to the south by Cass Gilbert's Beaux-Arts masterpiece—the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House—and to the north by towering limestone skyscrapers, Bowling Green stands as an unshakeable monument to New York's enduring civic identity.

2. Dutch Nieuw Amsterdam: The Cattle Plain & Plaine

In the 1620s, during the initial Dutch settlement of Nieuw Amsterdam, this open space was known as the Plaine or Marckveldt (Market Field). Situated directly outside the wooden palisade gates of Fort Amsterdam, it served as the colony’s primary open-air forum:

• The Cattle & Produce Market: Dutch farmers and Lenape traders gathered weekly to barter furs, salted pork, grain, and wampum.
• Military Parade Ground: Peter Stuyvesant drilled the colonial garrison and municipal burgher militia on the turf.
• Treaty Councils: In 1626, tradition holds that the historic purchase of Manhattan Island was ratified near this clearing outside the fort's northern bastion.

3. The 1733 Royal Charter: Lawnbowling & One Peppercorn

On March 12, 1733, the Common Council of the City of New York passed a historic municipal resolution officially chartering the space:

"Resolved, that this Court will lease a piece of ground at the lower end of Broadway fronting the Fort, unto Mr. John Chambers, Mr. Peter Bayard, and Mr. Peter Jay... for the sole use and purpose of a Bowling Green, with walks therein, for the beauty and ornament of the said street, as well as for the recreation & delight of the inhabitants of this City."

The lease was granted for a symbolic annual rent of "one peppercorn" payable on the feast of St. Michael the Archangel. The gentlemen enclosed the lawn with a neat wooden fence, rolled the turf smooth, and played English lawn bowls, giving the park the enduring name it bears today.

4. July 9, 1776: Toppling the Gilded King George III

In 1770, following the repeal of the Stamp Act, the British colonial assembly erected a monumental, 4,000-pound equestrian statue of King George III in the center of Bowling Green. Sculpted in London by Joseph Wilton, the monarch was depicted in Roman imperial armor astride a charging steed, gilded entirely in pure gold leaf atop a 15-foot white marble pedestal.

Six years later, on the sweltering evening of July 9, 1776, George Washington ordered the newly adopted Declaration of Independence read aloud to his Continental soldiers assembled at the Common (modern City Hall Park).

Electrified by the words, an ecstatic mob of soldiers, sailors, and civilian Sons of Liberty marched down Broadway to Bowling Green. Scaling the protective iron fence, they lassoed ropes around the royal statue, heaved it to the cobblestones, and decapitated the tyrant's effigy.

The 4,000 pounds of lead were loaded onto wagons and transported secretly to the foundry of General Oliver Wolcott in Litchfield, Connecticut, where patriotic women and daughters melted the King into 42,088 lead musket cartridges. As patriot soldiers quipped, the redcoats would soon receive "melted majesty fired into their ranks!"

5. The 1771 Cast-Iron Fence: Physical Scars of the Revolution

One of the most extraordinary historical artifacts in New York City is the 1771 cast-iron fence that still surrounds Bowling Green today. Manufactured in England and shipped across the Atlantic, it is the oldest surviving fence in the United States and is designated an individual NYC Landmark.

Walking along the perimeter, visitors can witness the physical scars of the American Revolution:

• Sawed-Off Royal Finials: Originally, every vertical post of the fence was crowned with a decorative cast-iron finial shaped like a royal British crown or royal crest.
• Patriot Hacksaws: On the night King George was toppled, the Sons of Liberty took hacksaws and chisels to the fence, furiously lopping off every royal crown as symbols of despotism.
• Tactile Evidence: Running your hand across the tops of the fence posts today reveals the rough, jagged saw cuts left by patriot craftsmen on July 9, 1776.

6. Cass Gilbert’s 1907 Alexander Hamilton US Custom House

Terminating the southern vista of Bowling Green rises one of the grandest Beaux-Arts palaces in the world: the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, completed in 1907 by master architect Cass Gilbert (who later designed the Woolworth Building).

Erected on the exact site of original Fort Amsterdam, the building was built to collect federal maritime customs duties—which in the 1900s generated an astonishing 80% of the entire United States federal government revenue.

Gilbert adorned the exterior with forty-four monumental Corinthian columns and four colossal granite sculpture groups carved by Daniel Chester French (sculptor of the Lincoln Memorial) representing the Four Continents: Asia, America, Europe, and Africa. Inside, the grand oval rotunda features Reginald Marsh's 1937 WPA maritime shipping murals. Today, the building houses the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

7. Arturo Di Modica's Charging Bull & 21st-Century Pilgrimage

In December 1989, Italian-American sculptor Arturo Di Modica delivered an audacious piece of guerrilla public art: dropping a 7,100-pound bronze sculpture of a snorting, muscular bull outside the New York Stock Exchange as a Christmas gift to celebrate the resilience of the American financial spirit following the 1987 Black Monday market crash.

While the NYSE initially had the bull hauled away to an impound lot, public outcry led the Department of Parks and Recreation to grant it temporary refuge at the northern tip of Bowling Green. That temporary installation became permanent.

Today, the Charging Bull is one of the most recognized sculptures on the planet. Daily queues of thousands of visitors stretch across the cobblestones to photograph the beast and rub its horns and flanks for financial luck. Alongside the historic 1905 Beaux-Arts subway control house (designed by Heins & LaFarge) and neighboring residential conversions like 1 Wall Street, Bowling Green remains the energetic beating heart where New York's history and global future collide.