William Parry

Hunter College

Iron fence post from Bowling Green Park

This object echoes so many conflicts, past and present, over local versus external government, public versus private space, and preservation versus development. Bowling Green was the first public park in NYC (1733). It originally had a wooden fence that was burned during the Stamp Act riots in 1765. In 1770, a gilded lead equestrian statue of King George III was erected, and the iron fence was placed around the park a year later, to protect the statue from patriot vandals. The fence posts had small golden crowns on their finials. When news of the Declaration of Independence reached NYC on July 9, 1776, a patriot mob pulled down the statue, and sawed off the crowns on the fence. You can still feel the saw marks if you run your finger over the tops of the posts. Over the following 200 years, the park was repeatedly altered and reconstructed, and the iron fence was dismantled and temporarily removed at least twice (1905 subway construction, 1939 redesign, 1976-7 restoration). At some point a significant portion of the original fence was lost (or more likely stolen for scrap), but you can't tell now which pieces are original, and which are replicas. The fence was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.