Toppling of the Statue of George III

Background. Bowling Green, a small historic park at the southern end of Broadway in Lower Manhattan, held a monumental equestrian statue of King George III before the Revolutionary War. The British government erected the 4,000-pound gilded lead statue there on August 21, 1770, depicting the King in Roman garb after the style of the Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius. A cast-iron fence was erected around the park in 1773 to protect it.

Deteriorating Relations. After 1770, relations with the mother country deteriorated rapidly, and the statue became a magnet for protests at Bowling Green. This mounting hostility set the stage for the statue's destruction once independence was declared in 1776.

Aftermath and Commemoration. The toppled 4,000-pound statue is said to have been melted into ammunition for the Continental Army to fight the British. When the defeated British military later boarded ships for England, General George Washington led the Continental Army down to Bowling Green to witness the last British troops sailing from Lower Manhattan. In March 2017 the park was co-named Evacuation Day Plaza, commemorating the end of a seven-year British occupation.