From its roots as a livestock pasture and parade ground, this space has become City Hall Park, a pleasant green oasis close to New York City’s financial district. Stop here as you tour lower Manhattan.
New York City’s early development started with Dutch settlement at the southern tip of Manhattan. In the colonial days, settlers grazed livestock next to a Native American trail in a public area known as the Commons. Over time, the space held an almshouse, a debtors’ prison and a soldiers’ barracks. Appreciate its current use as a public park convenient to government buildings.
By the early 1800s, the city built the impressive City Hall of New York next to the Commons. Gradually other tall buildings were constructed around the park and one of the world’s most important financial centers developed just a few blocks away. Pick up brochures at the Visitor Information Kiosk at the southwestern end of the park and tour this part of Manhattan to see the diversity of modern New York City. Wall Street, South Street Seaport, Chinatown and Trinity Church are all short walks away.
View the statues inside the park itself, including monuments to patriots Nathan Hale and Horace Greeley. The centerpiece fountain by Jacob Wrey Mould has a central column over a circular basin with sprays providing cool mist and pleasant splashing as visitors sit on benches nearby. Enjoy the gardens planted with colorful annuals every spring. Just a block away is the African Burial Ground National Monument, memorializing the lives of slaves and free black citizens buried under this part of the city in the late 1600s and 1700s.
Watch the park fill with City Hall workers on their lunch breaks and residents of New York City conducting business. This is the place to come for your marriage license if you’re planning a New York City wedding.
From City Hall Park, follow the bike trail to the Brooklyn Bridge and gaze back at the park and the island. Imagine the early settlement that stood on this spot before its amazing transformation to modern Manhattan.
