This patch of green at the end of Broadway is most notable for the early history it has seen. This is most likely the spot where, in 1626, Dutchman Peter Minuit gave glass beads and other trinkets worth about 60 guilders ($24) to a group of Indians, and then claimed he had thereby bought Manhattan. The local Indians didn't think they owned this island (not because they didn't believe in property, a colonial myth) because Manhattan was considered communal hunting ground, so it isn't clear what the Indians thought the trinkets meant. Either (a) they just thought the exchange was a formal way of closing an agreement to extend the shared hunting use to this funny-looking group of pale people with yellow beards; or (b) they were knowingly selling land that they didn't own in the first place, thus, performing the first shrewd real-estate deal of the Financial District.

When King George III repealed the hated Stamp Act in 1770, New Yorkers magnanimously raised a statue of him here, although today it's just another lunch spot for stockbrokers. The statue lasted 5 years, until the day the Declaration of Independence was read to the public in front of City Hall (now Federal Hall) and a crowd rushed down Broadway to topple the statue, chop it up, melt it down, and transform it into 42,000 bullets, which they later used to shoot the British.

With the demise of the World Trade Center, the lower Manhattan TKTS booth, officially named the Downtown Theatre Centre, has relocated to Bowling Green Park Plaza. This is the place to pick up same-day discounted tickets for a Broadway or Off-Broadway show; the line is usually shorter here than it is at the Times Square location.

On the fringe of the park is the stunning, Cass Gilbert-designed 1907 beaux arts U.S. Customs House, currently housing the National Museum of the American Indian.