Bowling Green is a small, historic, public park in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City, at the southern end and address origin of Broadway.

Located in the 18th century next to the site of the original Dutch fort of New Amsterdam, it served as a public gathering place and under the English was designated as a park in 1733.

The park included an actual bowling green and a monumental equestrian statue of King George III prior to the American Revolutionary War.

There may have been a residence for the chief of a local Lenape Native American tribe at the southern end of the Wickquasgeck trail (modern-day Broadway).

[4] The park has long been a center of activity in the city, going back to colonial New Amsterdam, when it served as a cattle market between 1638 and 1647, and a parade ground.

In 1675, the city's Common Council designated the "plaine afore the forte" for an annual market of "graine, cattle and other produce of the country".

[5] 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".

[8] 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 to topple the statue of King George III; in the process, finials on the tops of the fence depicting the royal symbol of a crown were sawed off.

[16][17] Following the Revolution, the remains of Fort Amsterdam facing Bowling Green were demolished in 1790 and part of the rubble used to extend Battery Park to the west.

[18]: 68  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 (17 m) facade under a central pediment[c] and a front towards the Battery Parade, as the new piece of open ground was called.

The park was described in 1926 as having "walks, benches, sumac trees and poorly-kept [sic] lawns", as well as a fountain in the center used by local children to cool off in the summer.

[1] In 1982, the Irish Institute of New York installed a plaque in the park commemorating an important religious liberty challenge which occurred in colonial Manhattan in 1707, when Reverend Francis Makemie, the founder of American Presbyterianism, preached at a home near the park in defiance of the orders of Lord Cornbury, and was subsequently arrested, charged with preaching a "pernicious doctrine", and later acquitted.

[27][28] In March 2017, Bowling Green was co-named Evacuation Day Plaza, which was marked by the erection of an illuminated street sign,[29] commemorating the location of a pivotal event in the American Revolutionary War that ended a seven-year occupation by British troops.

It has a fenced-in grassy area with a large fountain in the center, surrounded by benches that are popular at lunchtime with workers from the nearby Financial District.

The New York City Subway station on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line, opened in 1905 and serving the 4 and ​5 trains, is located under the plaza.

[8][35] The fence was originally designed by Richard Sharpe, Peter T. Curtenius, Gilbert Forbes, and Andrew Lyall, and was erected at a cost of 843 New York pounds (£562 sterling).

[27] The oversize sculpture depicts a bull, the symbol of aggressive financial optimism and prosperity, leaning back on its haunches with its head lowered as if ready to charge.

[39] The Fearless Girl statue, commissioned by State Street Global Advisors as a way to call attention to the gender pay gap and a lack of women on corporate financial sector boards, was installed on March 7, 2017.