BOWLING GREEN is still mapped as a street, a short connector between Broadway and Whitehall Street just east of Battery Park. Its adjoining triangle park, featuring the Delacorte Fountain, is NYC’s oldest park and bears the same name as the street. Once open to traffic, it became a pedestrian plaza a few decades ago. #1 Bowling Green is the former US Customs House, now the Museum of the American Indian.
There’s a continuous road beginning here that runs all the way north to Rensselaer County, across the Hudson River from Albany (north of the Bronx, the road is known as the Albany Post Road after its original use for mail carriers), and if you include New York State Route 9, the road goes all the way to Route 11, just south of the Canadian border.
What would become Bowling Green in colonial times was a large open space north of Fort Amsterdam (built by the Dutch in 1612, 1625), the Marktveldt (commemorated by today’s Marketfield Street). By 1641, it was a hog market, but by 1659 the Dutch had replaced the hogs with cattle. It was indeed used for lawn bowling, starting in 1732 when, by order of New York’s city council, it became NYC’s first public park. In the early 1770s, it was surrounded by an iron fence topped by crowns and featured a gilded statue of George III. When the USA declared its independence in 1776, the statue was pulled down and, according to legend, melted for ammunition. The fence, minus its crowns, is still there, but not without interruption; from 1914-1919, according to historian Barbaralee Diamonstein, the fence was stored in Central Park while Bowling Green was torn up to build the IRT subway station beneath it. Abraham DePeyster, mayor from 1691 to 1694, had his statue in Bowling Green moved to its location in Hanover Square in the 1980s and in 2006 moved on again, this time to Thomas Paine Park just east of the intersection of Lafayette and Worth Streets. At this rate, DePeyster will be in Central Park soon enough.
Check out the ForgottenBook, take a look at the gift shop. As always, “comment…as you see fit.” I earn a small payment when you click on any ad on the site.
10/28/25
9 comments
Several pieces of the George III statue were preserved, and are owned buy the New-York Historical Society. The tail is on display at their building on Central Park West.
The Museum of the American Indian wound up as part of the Smithsonian located in the old Custom House by a round-about manner. George Gustav Heye collected Native American artifacts at the turn of the last Century, and moved into a Museum at 155th Street and Broadway, in Manhattan, with a storge facility in the Bronx. In 1989 the collection became part of the Smithsonian, but Heye, who died in 1957, had stipulated that the collection had to remain in New York. To make it work, the Smithsonian opened the current Bowling Green location, with some items being shown in Washington, DC>
Wait, what? George III was depicted in his statue with a tail?
Statue had to be made of lead then.Pretty cheapo
To add a historic subway related note:
Back around 1937 (according to Wiki) when the platform was extended 100 feet or so northward, a subway entrance building was built in Bowling Green Park towards the northern side of the park. This entrance remained in place until the mid-1970s when it was closed and removed as part of a rebuilding project which added a full platform on the east side of the station (for uptown trains) as well as a mezzanine and entrance in front of the Custom House building and a lower level to allow for an elevator and additional exits and ability of passengers to transfer between the center platform (which used to be downtown and uptown) to the new uptown platform and a new exit to Broadway and Stone St.
(Just for info, I started working in a building at Water & Whitehall Sts in 1974 and used that entrance building every day to get the uptown train to head home so I remember that rebuilding project).
That’s something I’ll have to find out about. I took the Lex uptown from 1967-71 to get to school and I don’t recall that entrance at all. Then again, I used the control house at Battery Park.
The MTA customer service storefront office, to set up OMNY payments and such, is at 3 Stone Street, which is right next to the old Custom House/India Museum building that fronts onto Bowling Green. while you can take the 4/5 to Bowling green, the R/W is literally right under the storefront. Whichever line you take, if you have the time and inclination, you can always take in the museum while you’re down there.
“What would become Bowling Green in colonial times was a large open space north of Fort Amsterdam, built by the Dutch in 1612”
1612?
1625
Ah, Whitehall Street.
The government once invited me to visit them at 39 Whitehall.