New York's oldest public park spreads beneath your feet. Bowling Green was set aside as a public commons in 1733, when the city leased it for the token rent of one peppercorn per year and residents actually bowled here on the grass. In 1770 the colonial government erected a gilded lead equestrian statue of King George III at the park's center.
On July 9, 1776, just hours after the Declaration of Independence was read aloud to Washington's troops in the common north of town, a crowd of patriots and soldiers marched down here and toppled it. The lead was melted into 42,088 bullets for the Continental Army. The iron fence that enclosed the statue survived, and still stands today.
Look at it closely: the fence posts were originally topped with crowns, which the rioters sawed off that night, leaving the stumps you can still see. Follow Broadway north from here, the spine of America's greatest commercial street you're now walking, the same path Dutch cattle once walked to pasture.