“276 Years of Bowling Green”">“276 Years of Bowling Green”
Thursday, March 12th, 2009
“Broadway from the Bowling Green, 1828″
Right now I’m researching a new project about the history of New York City, so I thought I’d start sharing some of this stuff on the blog. Here’s a piece on the history of Bowling Green, the city’s oldest public park, from today’s New York Times. The Times explains that the city leased the land to three well-to-inhabitants who in turn made it into a park in 1733. But the general public were not allowed access to it at that time. Only people who met the 18th century standard of “quality” and “standing” were aloud inside.
In the early 1800s, Lower Broadway around Bowling Green became the most desirable neighborhood for fashionable New Yorkers, as depicted in the lithograph up top. Even thought the notion of a genteel nobility that had defined the upper classes during the 18th century had largely faded, the public did not gain access to the park until around 1850.
Today, people from all over the world pose by the gigantic testicles adorning the bull statue that is modern Bowling Green’s most recognizable feature.