New York's oldest public park, Bowling Green is a teardrop of a triangle cut out of the Financial District, just above the Staten Island Ferry and Battery Park. In 2006, the popular lunch-time destination of local works had a beautiful fountain installed in the center of the park, which is bounded on all sides by a grove of trees. The fence around the part—which dates from 1771, five years before the United States declared independence from England—is, along with the park itself, a historic landmark.

Bowling Green was also the starting point of the famous ticker-tape parades held for—to name a few—Theodore Roosevelt, Charles Lindbergh, and General Douglas MacArthur. Those parades, which New York City can claim ownership to since having the world's first in 1886 during the dedication of the Statue Of Liberty, also gave the stretch of Broadway from Bowling Green Park to City Hall Park the nickname "Canyon Of Heroes."

The park is also the home of the famous "Charging Bull" sculpture, which is often incorrectly associated with the financial firm Merrill Lynch. The bull—a symbol of prosperity in the financial world—was a non-commissioned sculpture that the artist drove into Manhattan and left in front of the New York Stock Exchange on December 15th, 1989. The early Christmas present from guerilla artist Arturo Di Modica, however, wasn't shown much appreciation by the city initially, with the police eventually impounding the sculpture. Ever the vocal fans of art, the people of New York raised their voices to City Hall until the Parks & Recreation—those wonderful custodians of many of New York's finer things—took the statue and installed it around the corner in Bowling Green Park. In the decades since, the Charging Bull has become one of the most recognizable and most photographed pieces of artwork in the city.

"The Sphere" sculpture—originally found in front of the World Trade Center—can also be found in Bowling Green.