Bowling Green

You are standing where Broadway begins and where, in a sense, New York began. Just to the south, where the huge former Custom House now stands, was Fort Amsterdam, the heart of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam from the 1620s. This open ground in front of the fort was used for markets, parades and gatherings.

1A park for a peppercorn

In 1733 the city leased the land to a group of neighbors to make a bowling green, for a token rent of one peppercorn a year. Hence the name. It is the oldest public park in the city.

2The fall of the king

In 1770 a gilded lead equestrian statue of King George III was set up in the center. The iron fence around the park went up soon after, in the early 1770s. On July 9, 1776, after the Declaration of Independence was read in public, a crowd pulled the statue down. The lead was hauled to Connecticut and melted into ammunition for the rebel army; the figure usually quoted, from the accounts of those who did the work, is more than 42,000 musket balls.

That night the crowns topping the fence posts were sawed off too.

The fence is still here: it is the oldest in New York. In 1989 an unexpected neighbor arrived, Arturo Di Modica's Charging Bull, which the sculptor dropped off without permission in front of the Stock Exchange and the city moved to this spot.

3What to look for

• The tops of the fence posts: look for the marks left by the 1776 saw cuts.
• The former Custom House (1907) by Cass Gilbert, with Daniel Chester French's four statues of the continents.
• The bronze bull at the north tip of the park.