[3] Today the Green is bordered by the modern paved roads of College, Chapel, Church, and Elm streets.

The Green was used as the main burial grounds for the residents of New Haven during its first 150 years, but by 1821 the practice was abolished and many of the headstones were moved to the Grove Street Cemetery.

It is conservatively estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000[8] people remain buried there, including Benedict Arnold's first wife, members of President Rutherford B. Hayes' family, Reverend James Pierpont (founder of Yale University), and Theophilus Eaton, one of the founders of New Haven and the church and governor of the New Haven Colony for 19 years.

[10] A self-electing group of private individuals, the Committee of the Proprietors of Common and Undivided Lands at New Haven, maintain ownership of the green.

[12] Two of the three churches are the work of the influential early-19th century architects Ithiel Town and Asher Benjamin, and one of them is the nation's first large-scale Gothic Revival structure.

On the northwest side of the Green, across College Street, stand Phelps Gate and the Yale University buildings bordering Old Campus.

On the southwest side along Chapel Street are stores, bars, and such popular restaurants as Claire's Corner Copia.

On the southeast side of the green, across Church Street is The Exchange Building (1832, restored in 1990) and the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse (James Gamble Rogers, 1913).

New Haven's Victorian City Hall (by Henry Austin in 1861; restored and added to by Herbert S. Newman and Partners) and the Amistad Memorial are also at this end of the Green.

[20] On the northeast side along Elm Street by the lower Green is the New Haven Free Public Library (Cass Gilbert, 1908).

The library was once the site of the Bristol House, also designed by David Hoadley, whose doorway is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.