Bowling Green Park, New York

Bowling Green Park in New York's Financial District may be small, but its history stretches far beyond its modest size. The site has been in public use since Dutch colonial times, when it stood near Fort New Amsterdam.

Enclosed by its 18th-century iron fence, Bowling Green is the oldest park in New York City, officially designated in 1733. In its early days, it was quite literally a bowling green, a place for leisure in a growing colonial town. It once held a statue of King George III on horseback—until the American Revolution intervened, and the statue was pulled down in a symbolic rejection of British rule.

Long before that, the area held importance for the indigenous Lenape people, whose settlement marked the end of the Wickquasgeck Trail, which later transformed into Broadway. It was also here, according to tradition, that the Dutch colonial governor of New Amsterdam, Peter Minuit, negotiated the purchase of Manhattan Island from the Lenape in 1626, for a total of just $24-worth of trinkets...

By the late 18th century, the park was surrounded by elegant Federal-style townhouses, placing it at the heart of early American political life. Most notably, George Washington lived just north of the park at the Alexander Macomb House from February 23 to August 30, 1790. During that time, New York City briefly served as the nation’s capital, and Bowling Green sat just steps away from where Washington carried out his presidential duties at the nearby Federal Hall. He would have passed through this area regularly, making the park part of the daily landscape of the country’s first presidency, in a moment when the structure of the new government was still taking shape.

Today, the park is laid out as an elliptical plaza with a central fountain, offering a calm pocket within the surrounding financial district. Just outside its fence stands the well-known “Charging Bull,” a 7,000-pound bronze sculpture by Arturo Di Modica. For a time, it was joined by “Fearless Girl,” created by Kristen Visbal, before she was relocated, in 2017, to face the New York Stock Exchange.