Bowling Green - 9 July 1776

History
In 1733, New York residents petitioned the crown for the creation of a public park at the foot of Broadway. Before then, it had been public land used for grazing, but now residents wanted it set aside for lawn bowling - the fashionable sport in England in those days. Thus it became known as the Bowling Green.

The King complied by leasing this park to the residents of New York for the nominal fee of one peppercorn per year. When Queen Elizabeth II visited New York in 1976, a city official presented her with 200 peppercorns – one for each year of rent in arrears since the Revolution.

 

 

Revolution
In 1765, in protest against a new round of British taxes, some locals stormed the green and ripped down the fence put there by the King. Typically, the dispute was over money. Parliament wanted the colonies to pay for themselves, and as the costs of maintaining them rose, so did the taxes. In particular, the cost of protecting the colonists had been steadily increasing as they pushed inland into Indian territories.

To offset these costs, Parliament passed three tax laws in the 1760's which became notorious in the American Colonies - the Sugar Act, the Tea Act and the Stamp Act, the last of which was a tax on printed documents. The colonies were in an uproar, and some already began to call for independence. Parliament defended these taxes on the grounds that their proceeds were returned to the colonies in the form of protection and services, but since Americans were still not represented in Parliament, these arguments fell on deaf ears. “No taxation without representation” was the American battle-cry long before the declaration of independence was written.

In 1770, the British replaced the fence with the one we have now - making it one of the oldest artifacts in Manhattan. And they also installed an equestrian statue of George III in the middle of the Green as a way of reasserting his authority. During the five years, tensions in the colonies were to boil over, flaring into outright Revolution on the 18th of April, 1775.

4 July 1776: representatives of the 13 colonies signed the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, and returned to their homes to rally the cause. George Washington, despite being a Virginian, was sent to New York in order to ensure its loyalty to the cause.

9 July 1776: in City Hall Park just up Broadway, Washington read the Declaration aloud to patriots and soldiers of the Continental Army. “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another . . .” - such was the feeling inspired by this first public reading of the founding document of the United States that despite Washington's pleas for moderation, the mob raced back down Broadway to attack this park once again. (See above)

They ripped down the statue of the King, tore his head off, and set it on a spike outside a Tavern up near Ft Washington – now 181 st and Broadway. They then sent the metal body to a weapons factory in Connecticut where, in the words of one veteran, it was hoped that “the emanations from the leaden George III would make deep impressions in the bodies of some of his red-coated and Tory subjects.” This was New York's crossing of the Rubicon, its way of declaring itself in favor of the Revolution. With this act, the die was cast; the war was on. Within two months, the British Army would chase Washington out of New york and rule it by marshall law for the duration of the war.