The tiny grass-and-gravel patch at Bowling Green is far more important than its size lets on. Legend says this is where the Dutch "purchased" the island Manahatta from the indigenous Lenape for an obscenely low sum in 1626. It also holds the distinction of being NYC’s first public park, established in 1733. While the wood benches and London Plane trees make this a pretty pit stop, the real reason to visit is for the 7000lb Charging Bull statue nearby, installed in 1989 as a piece of guerilla art by sculptor Arturo Di Modica to celebrate the strength and vitality of America’s economy, two years after a market crash. It’s now a permanent city fixture that supposedly brings financial prosperity...as long as you rub its bronze testicles.
Attention and controversy returned to the park in 2017, when a financial firm installed Kristen Visbal's Fearless Girl, a statue of a young girl with arms akimbo posed as if in defiant opposition to the bull. Some cheered it as a potent symbol of feminism or anticapitalism (the latter a particularly ironic take, considering it was commissioned to advertise an index fund featuring companies with women in leadership positions). Di Modica, however, decried it as a warping and misreading of his artwork and called for Fearless Girl's immediate removal. After much public wrangling and negotiation, she was relocated a few blocks away, directly facing the New York Stock Exchange building.
