The gem by the Statue of Liberty

Around 7000 to 8000 people visit Battery Park at the South end of Manhattan every day, to visit the Statue Of Liberty. Only very few come to Bowling Green, just across Broadway. It’s our city’s oldest park, here since 1738.

Back in 1770 city officials decided to erect an iron fence, painted gold, around Bowling Green. And to commission and install a 2-ton statue of the the king of England at the time, George III. That statue lasted only 6 years.

The Declaration Of Independence, the document by which Americans date the beginning of our nation, was signed on July 4, 1776.

Here’s my photo of an earlier version that was voted down on July 2, because it guaranteed freedom to enslaved people. If only.

The July 4 version was brought here by horse courier over five days and nights. It was read aloud at City Hall up on Wall Street. Then a troop of Army men went down to Bowling Green and destroyed the king’s statue. Its takedown was for 2 reasons:

One, the Sons of Liberty hated the king.

Two, the statue was made of lead. Bullets are made of lead, too. That lead was later melted down into 40,088 musketballs for the Revolution.

The British Tour, from Isle Of New York Tours, stops at Bowling Green so that guests can have a moment to actually touch history. Look at this!

Here’s a similar iron fence of the same era as Bowling Green’s. It’s at the Palace of Versailles! I photographed it realizing that the Bowling Green fence must have looked very similar in 1770–1776. The thicker fenceposts are topped with royal crowns. All of this has been gilded, painted gold.

Bowling Green fence was also originally gilded. And it was originally topped with crowns of lead. See how the iron legs holding up the oil lamp are bowed outwards? That was to allow room for the crown that was once there.

On the night of July 9, 1776, all the lead crowns were cut down as well, to add into the musketball supply. Lead is a soft metal, so the revolutionaries were able to saw the crowns off, all 100 of them.

Why should YOU visit Bowling Green? For one thing, it has plenty of seats after you’ve spent 4 hours standing in the ferry, standing at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and standing in the boat again. You need to rest.

For another, you are TOTALLY surrounded with American history. Buildings to the west were major ocean liner companies before jetliners replaced them. The building on the east was the oil company that supplied all those ocean liners. The building to the South is the old Customs House named for Alexander Hamilton, and the National Museum of the American Indian is inside.

The fenceposts surrounding the park are available for you to actually feel marks of the saws that worked to take off those crowns back on July 9, 1776!

Isle Of New York fights overtures

Overtourism concerns me greatly because I’m a tourguide. I don’t want a backlash against tourists, just after coming off 16 months without work. We need work!

The professional tourist guides association GANYC, of which I’m a member, is concerned about hundreds of people at once — who don’t know each other exist — all converging on the Brooklyn Bridge or some restaurant that was in a movie, at exactly the same time! Residents of that Maui district are up in arms about the thousands of tourists who park in people’s yards, block traffic and buy all the food in roadside markets, leaving nothing for residents.

This can happen anywhere.

The below photo shows an estimated 20,000 people trying to get off the Brooklyn Bridge all at the same time. We tour guides understand that a group travels only as fast as its slowest member. We also are aware that a sudden loud noise may cause a stampede! One occurred in the summer of 2019 in Times Square. A motorcycle backfired. Hundreds of people ran in all directions at once.

If a motorcycle had backfired near this group, they could run only in one direction and people might get trampled. When tourists are hurt anywhere on Earth it’s bad for tourism anywhere on Earth.

So we have an overtourism committee that suggests walking customers over other less crowded bridges.

See the difference? Just 10 miles away is High Bridge in Upper Manhattan. It’s an easily walkable bridge with a flat grade, unlike the Brooklyn bridge which rises for about half a kilometer. Yet as you can see, only 3 or 4 people are walking it. Our job as guides is to get people off the Brooklyn bridge and onto High Bridge.

I feel bad for the people of that area of Maui, Hawaii. And the people of Venice and Amsterdam and Zagreb, all of which have been flooded by growing numbers of tourists. Understanding and respecting a native’s pride of place is crucial for tourists to behave like fellow human beings