Bowling Green (New York City)

Bowling Green (New York City)

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Bowling Green (New York City)

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". The Bowling Green Fence and Park is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

Description
History
Surrounding architecture
Subway station
Notes
External links

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).

History

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

A closeup of the replica statue of Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius. The original is in the nearby Capitoline Museum. The George III statue was based on this sculpture

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 later. Historical inaccuracies include portraying George III in contemporary garb-instead of a Roman toga, and 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, local Sons of Liberty 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 under the direction of Oliver Wolcott to be made into 42,088 patriot bullets-at 20 bullets per pound {2,104.4 pounds}. The statue's head was to have been paraded about town on pike-staffs-but was recovered by Loyalists and sent to England. Six pieces of the lead statue are preserved in the New-York Historical Society; one in the Museum of the City of New York; 3 parts in Connecticut {estimated total of prehaps 260/270 pounds}; 5 other pieces are reported to have survived but have been missing since 1777; 1829; 1864; 1894 {in excess of 140 pounds{?}. The event has been depicted over the years in several works of art, including an 1854 painting by William Walcutt and a 1859 painting by Johannes Adam Simon Oertel.

The marble slab of the pedestal of the statue was first used for a tombstone of a Major John Smith of the Black Watch who died 1783; when Smith's grave site was leveled in 1804, the slab became a stone step at two mansions, until 1880 when the inscription was discovered; it was then transferred to the New-York Historical Society. Reputably, the monument base upon which the pedestal and statute rested stood until May 1818 when it was torn down and allegedly pieces became part of a house's walk. Also allegedly the Monument base can be seen in the background of 1790 portrait of George Washington by John Trumbull. The William Pitt statue is in the New-York Historical Society.

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. In its place a grand governor's mansion was built, suitable, it was hoped for a President's House, with a four-columned portico facing across Bowling Green and up Broadway. Governor John Jay inhabited it, but when the state capital was moved to Albany, the house served as a boarding house before being demolished in 1815.^[4] Elegant townhouses were built around the park, which remained largely the private domain of the residents, though now some of the Tory patricians of New York were replaced by Republican ones; leading New York merchants, led by Abraham Kennedy, in a mansion at 1, Broadway that had a 56-foot facade under a central pediment^[5] and a front towards the Battery Parade, as the new piece of open ground was called. The Hon. John Watts, whose summer place was Rose Hill, Manhattan, Chancellor Robert Livingston at no. 5, Stephen Whitney at no. 7, and John Stevens, all constructed residences facing Bowling Green.

By 1850, however, with the opening of Lafayette Street, then of Washington Square and Fifth Avenue, 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.

Surrounding architecture

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.

The Bowling Green Fence and Park were listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1980,^[6] but the urbanistic value of the space is created by the skyscrapers and other structures that surround it: the Alexander Hamilton US Custom House to the south, and, clockwise, One Broadway (the "Washington Building", Edward H. Kendall, 1884; refaced and remodelled by Walter B. Chambers^[7]), the Bowling Green Building, 11 Broadway (1895-98, W. and G. Audsley, later serving the White Star Line), the Cunard Building, 25 Broadway (1921, Benjamin Wistar Morris, with Carr�re and Hastings),^[8] facing it on the east side, the Standard Oil Company Building, 26 Broadway (1922, Carr�re and Hastings with Shreve, Lamb & Blake), and? the one stylistic intruder? 2 Broadway (1959-60, Emery Roth & Sons, resurfaced 1999 Skidmore, Owings & Merrill), a Modernist glass wall that replaced the distinguished Produce Exchange Building (1881-84, George B. Post), as an "acceptable sacrifice"^[9] intended to spur financial district rebuilding.

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.

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.