Revolutionary Walking Tour | Sunday, July 3, at 4:00 p.m.

As readers of our blog know, we like to think of America's birthday as not just taking place on a single day -- July 4th -- but over the course of week from July 2nd (the day we actually declared independence) to July 9th (the day New York finally got on board).

So, it's only fitting that as part of our week-long celebration of America's 235th birthday, James will be leading a walking tour of Revolutionary and early American sites in Lower Manhattan on Sunday, July 3, at 4:00 p.m.

Planned stops will include famous places, like Federal Hall, Fraunces Tavern, and Bowling Green (depicted above on night of July 9, 1776), but we’ll also talk about lesser-known sites, such as Archibald Kennedy’s house; George Washington’s presidential mansion on Broadway; Jefferson’s home where he brokered the deal to move the capital of the United States to Washington, DC; and many more. This will be a fast-paced, entertaining, and informative walk back in time.

Copies of Inside the Apple will be available for purchase at the tour.

To reserve, send an email to events@insidetheapple.net with

• Your name
• The number in your party
• A contact cell phone number
• A good email address where we can send you information about where the tour will start.

PLEASE NOTE that if you reserve no later than Tuesday, June 28, the cost is just $10 per person.

This tour will have only a limited number of spaces, so please reserve early to avoid disappointment.

Payment will be taken at the start of the tour by cash only. Directions to the tour’s starting point will be sent out after your reservation is confirmed. All reservations received starting Wednesday, June 29, will be $15 per person.

Hope to see you there!

Read more about New York's role in the Revolution in

Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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Bowling Green's Fence Posts

Yesterday, Sewell Chan blogged at the New York Times about the 276th birthday of Bowling Green, New York's first park. (The post includes a nifty 360-degree panorama of the park.)

As one commenter noted, the post mentioned the famous felling of the statue of George III on July 9, 1776, but not the subsequent removal of the finials from the park's wrought-iron fence.

This is a topic we deal with in Inside the Apple, where we note:

The fence that surrounds the Bowling Green today is the original one erected ca. 1771. It is a New York City Landmark and one of the city’s most significant pieces of pre-Revolutionary architecture. If you walk around the outside of the park, you can easily see that the larger fence posts are uneven and that each is rough-hewn in a slightly different way. It is clear that there were once decorative objects at the top of the fence posts, but it remains a mystery what these finials actually looked like, or when they were removed.

Unlike the king’s statue, the fence is not mentioned in any news reports, diaries or letters of the time. Over the years, it has been posited the finials must have been something round (to be used as cannon balls) or something royal and therefore offensive to Americans. According to the New York Times, during the excavations for the foundations of the elevated railroad in 1878, “one of the round knobs struck from the railing” was unearthed. Later that year it was presented to David van Arsdale, the grandson of a Revolutionary soldier who had a direct role in the end of the war in New York. But that is the only time they are mentioned. 

Perhaps one will turn up someday and we’ll see exactly what they looked like. Until then, it’s worth a visit to Bowling Green to see—and feel—this reminder of the American Revolution.

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Inside the Apple comes out in less than two weeks. You can order your copy from an online merchant or ask about it at your local bookstore.

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Happy Evacuation Day!

Before we get to Thanksgiving (which will be the subject of a future post), we have another holiday coming up next week: Evacuation Day. So, break out the red, white, and blue, because Tuesday marks the 225th anniversary of the end of the Revolutionary War.

Even if you’re a bit fuzzy on your dates, you probably remember that the war ended with the Battle of Yorktown, which took place in Virginia in October 1781. However, despite the British surrender and the subsequent ratification of the Peace of Paris, British troops refused to leave their headquarters in New York City. (The British commander, Guy Carelton, was reluctant to leave due to the large number of Loyalist refugees that had come to the city following the British surrender. Many of those refugees eventually ended up settling in New Brunswick, Canada.)

To end the occupation once and for all, George Washington returned to New York on November 25, 1783, for the first time since he had lost Manhattan to the British in 1776. That morning the British troops pulled out of the city, sailing from the Battery through the Narrows. (Supposedly the last shot of the Revolutionary War was fired in anger at the shore of Staten Island.) Once the British had gone, Washington and his commanders marched into the city.

However, the British had left at least one insult behind. Someone had run a Union Jack up a flagpole, cut the halyard, and greased the pole so that when Washington arrived he’d still see the British colors flying over the city. It was up to a young sailor named John van Arsdale to rectify the situation. Using nails, he created cleats on the side of the flagpole and managed to carry a Stars-and-Stripes up to the top of the pole and replace the Union Jack before Washington’s arrival. (The somewhat fanciful depiction above is a later commemoration of the scene. Notice the fort directly behind the flagpole; that appears to be Castle Clinton in Battery Park, which wasn’t built until 1807 for service in the War of 1812.)

In the early part of the 19th century, Evacuation Day was celebrated with some fervor in New York City, but as the war passed into memory and many of its veterans died, the holiday lost its following. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November to be a day of Thanksgiving and the modern tradition of Thanksgiving was born. With this holiday following on or near Evacuation Day, New York’s local holiday fell by the wayside. (Compare this to Patriot’s Day in Massachusetts, which commemorates the start of the Revolution and is still going strong.)

There are couple of places you can go to celebrate Evacuation Day. The first is Fraunces Tavern on Pearl Street. This is the reconstructed version of the tavern where Washington had his final headquarters after his triumphant Evacuation Day return to the city. The tavern still operates a bar and restaurant as well as a fascinating small museum.

Nearby on Wall Street, a statue of Washington graces the front of Federal Hall National Memorial. Though the statue is there to commemorate a later event (Washington’s inaugural in 1789), it was erected on Evacuation Day.

In Union Square, take a look at the magnificent equestrian statue of Washington that stands at the 14th Street end of the square. This statue, by Henry Kirke Brown, is meant to depict Washington riding into the city on Evacuation Day.

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To read more about New York’s role in the Revolution, feel free to go ahead and pre-order a copy of Inside the Apple, which will be published in March 2009.

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Read more about Evacuation Day in
Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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