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Public park in Manhattan, New York

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 17th 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. It is the oldest public park in New York City and is surrounded by its original 18th century cast iron fence. The park included an actual bowling green and a monumental equestrian statue of King George III prior to the American Revolutionary War. Pulled down during the revolution, the 4000 pound statute is said to have been melted for ammunition to fight the British. Bowling Green is adjacent to another historic park, Battery Park, located to the southwest. It is surrounded by several buildings, including the Alexander Hamilton U. S. Custom House (with the NYC office of the National Archives), the International Mercantile Marine Company Building, Bowling Green Offices Building, Cunard Building, 26 Broadway, and 2 Broadway. The Charging Bull sculpture is located on the northern end of the park. The park is listed on the U. S. National Register of Historic Places under the name Bowling Green Fence and Park. It is also a contributing property to the Wall Street Historic District, an NRHP district created in 2007.

Bowling Green was a significant cultural site before European colonization. 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). There was also a large elm at the end of the trail, where the trail split. It is likely at Bowling Green that the Dutch Governor Peter Minuit purchased Manhattan for $24 worth of merchandise in 1626.

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". In 1677, the city's first public well was dug in front of Fort Amsterdam at Bowling Green. 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". The surrounding streets were not paved with cobblestones until 1744. On August 21, 1770, the British government erected a gilded lead equestrian statue of King George III in Bowling Green; the King was dressed in Roman garb in the style of the Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius. The statue had been commissioned in 1766, along with a statue of William Pitt, from the prominent London sculptor Joseph Wilton, as a celebration of victory after the Seven Years' War. With the rapid deterioration of relations with the mother country after 1770, the statue became a magnet for the Bowling Green protests. In 1773, the city passed an anti graffiti and anti desecration law to counter vandalism against the monument, and a protective cast iron fence was built along the perimeter of the park; the fence is still extant, making it the city's oldest fence. 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. one is in the Museum of the City of New York, and one is in Connecticut. (estimated total of 260–270 pounds); In 1991 the left hand and forearm of the statue was found in Wilton Connecticut; likewise 9 lead musket balls from the Monmouth Battlefield had the same lead content as the statue The stone slab on which the statue rested was used as a gravestone before becoming part of the collection of the New York Historical Society; the stone pedestal itself remained until it was torn down. The event has been depicted over the years in several works of art, including an 1854 painting by William Walcutt, and an 1859 painting by Johannes Adam Simon Oertel. On November 25, 1783, a U. S. soldier managed to rip down the British flag at Bowling Green and replace it with the Stars and Stripes—an apparently difficult feat, since the British had greased the flagpole. As the defeated British military boarded ships back to England, then General George Washington triumphantly led the Continental Army through Manhattan down to Bowling Green to witness the last British troops sailing away from Lower Manhattan.

The marble slab of the statue's pedestal was first used as the tombstone of a Major John Smith of the Black Watch, who died in 1783. When Smith's grave site was leveled in 1804, the slab became a stone step at two successive mansions; in 1880 the inscription was rediscovered, and the slab was transferred to the New York Historical Society. The monument base can be seen in the background of the portrait of George Washington painted by John Trumbull in 1790, now sited in City Hall. The William Pitt statue is in the New York Historical Society. 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. In its place a grand Government House was built, suitable, it was hoped, for a president's house, with a four columned portico facing across Bowling Green and up Broadway. Governor John Jay later inhabited it. When the state capital was moved to Albany, the building served as a boarding house and then the custom house before being demolished in 1815. 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 facade under a central pedimentefn|1=It is illustrated in a lithograph of Bowling Green. By 1850, with the opening of Lafayette Street and the subsequent completions of Washington Square Park and Fifth Avenue, the general northward migration of residences in Manhattan led to the conversion of the residences into shipping offices, resulting in full public access to the park.

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. It suffered neglect after World War II. Starting in 1972, the city renovated Bowling Green to restore its 17th century character. In conjunction with the park's renovation, the Bowling Green subway station underneath the park was expanded, necessitating the temporary excavation of the park. The renovation faced a lack of funds during the 1975 New York City fiscal crisis but was completed in the late 1970s. The Bowling Green Fence and Park were listed on the U. S. National Register of Historic Places in 1980. In 1989, the sculpture Charging Bull by Arturo Di Modica was installed at the northern tip of the park by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation after it had been confiscated by the police following its illegal installation on Wall Street. The sculpture has become one of the most popular and recognizable landmarks of the Financial District. commemorating the location of a pivotal event in the American Revolutionary War that ended a seven year occupation by British troops.