New York is a city of reinvention. It’s where you move if you want to start over, forget your past and create a new identity. It embraces modernity with skyscrapers and 5G towers dotting its blocks. But traces of New York’s past are still around, peeking through the pavement and glass in the forms of old streets, trees, fences and buildings.
This month saw the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and to mark the occasion, The New York Times has identified several sites that existed around the time of America’s founding, or even earlier, that can still be seen today. They tell the story of New York — and the country — in all its beauty and ugliness.
The American Revolution “was a revolution for freedom and independence, but ultimately, it didn’t abolish slavery, it didn’t grant enfranchisement to women,” said Asad Dandia, the Brooklyn borough historian.
The anniversary comes at time when there have been efforts by the federal government to rewrite and cloak the country’s history. In the past few years, public exhibits on slavery, civil rights, Indigenous history and more have been taken down.
But looking closely at the sites that have stood through history can help us understand, and perhaps advance, the democratic ideals that shaped the country from its birth — fusing the past and present into one, becoming part of the forward-looking momentum that defines this city. Two hundred and fifty years ago, democratic deliberation and debate were largely limited to propertied white men, Mr. Dandia said, but “that doesn’t mean that today we can’t expand to include all of us.”
Bowling Green Fence
An 18th Century Fence
On July 9, 1776, dozens of angry people marched to Bowling Green. As many historians retell it, the crowd had just heard the freshly signed Declaration of Independence read aloud in Lower Manhattan and were moved to tear down the gilded, 4,000-pound statue of King George III that stood there. The patriots also knocked ornamental crowns off the fence that surrounded the statue. They rollicked around the streets with King George’s head, and then much of the statue was turned into 42,088 musket balls to be used against British troops.
The removal of the statue of King George has a recent parallel with Confederate monuments being torn down. In 2020 alone, more than 160 such symbols were renamed or removed, according to one report. “There were a lot of folks who were like, ‘it’s anti-American to take down the statues, and it doesn’t comport to our values,’” Mr. Dandia said. “I always like to remind folks that the American patriots took down a statue of King George in the summer of 1776, because they felt that it no longer represented their ideals.”
Broadway
Originally the Wickquasgeck Trail
Before the arrival of European settlers in the 17th century, Mannahatta, as the Lenape called it, was a lush, hilly island of wetlands, forests and beaches. Through this abundant landscape, the Lenape carved the Wickquasgeck trail. Defined in large part by the natural terrain, the path connected Lenape village sites on the island, said Joe Baker, the executive director of the Lenape Center.
The Dutch arrived in the early 1600s, and they widened it and called it Brede Wegh, meaning broad way. Then, in 1664, the British took over, and eventually the street became Broadway. “For Lenape people, Broadway represents a trail of exclusion and a trail of invisibility,” Mr. Baker said. “It’s the story of our displacement.”
Today, the road runs from Lower Manhattan through Westchester. It still follows the original line of the Wickquasgeck trail in places, said Michelle Young, the author of “Broadway,” a history of the thoroughfare. Broadway, she said, is a “remnant and repository of Manhattan’s original geography.”
Unlike some of Manhattan’s other famous streets, such as Madison Avenue or 5th Avenue, Broadway is crooked. It stretches diagonally through midtown, breaking up the island’s rigid grid, which was adopted in 1811.
The street’s jaggedness can be a subtle reminder of the natural landscape that Manhattan once had. Ms. Young added, “without Broadway, a gridiron New York City might have lost a sense of humanity to its urban streetscape.”
English Elm
The Tree that Witnessed the Revolution
This tree, at the northwest corner of Washington Square Park, is one of the only living beings in the city that experienced the American Revolution. Estimated to be more than 300 years old, it’s known as a “witness tree,” said Harold Holzer, the Manhattan borough historian.
It’s often called the Hangman’s Elm, but this is likely to be a misnomer. Georgia Silvera Seamans, an urban community forester, said there was no known documentation to support that name, but “there were rumors that traitors to the Revolution were hung on the tree.”
The English elm is popular among several creatures that we share the city with. One of its branches is curved in a way that makes it ideal for pigeons to perch and squirrels to splay out on, Ms. Seamans said. And when this reporter tried to go up to the tree on a recent June evening, a rat scuttled by near its base.
The English Elm is literally living history, holding the collective breath of New York over three centuries. In her book “When Trees Testify,” the plant biologist Beronda L. Montgomery writes of how trees, through photosynthesis, capture the exhales of humans, which become part of their physical form. “That plants, including trees, hold the transformed breath of decades of human life in their physical form positions them as powerful vessels of the present, even as they represent and testify to history and those from their past.”
In this way, the English Elm has, in its body, the breaths of the centuries of people who’ve visited Washington Square. It holds the breaths of the civil rights activists who’ve rallied there, the jazz musicians who’ve played there, the skateboarders who’ve done flips on the fountain, the chess players who’ve sat there for hours.
African Burial Ground
An Overlooked History
In 1991, preliminary work on a new 34-story office building in Lower Manhattan began. But shortly after, more than 20 feet below ground level, a shocking discovery was made: The site contained the remains of around 15,000 Africans, many of whom were enslaved to build the city.
According to the National Park Service, the site is “the oldest and largest known excavated burial site in North America for both free and enslaved Africans.”
The burial ground dates back to the 1630s, and its discovery in the 1990s reshaped our understanding of the history of slavery in New York. Though often overlooked, around 40 percent of New York households had enslaved people in the early 18th century. It wasn’t until 1827, more than 50 years after the start of the Revolution, that slavery was abolished in the state.
“Slavery was part and parcel of colonialism in the North as it was in the South,” said Michael L. Blakey, an anthropology professor at the College of William and Mary who led the research project for the site.
The burial ground is now a stark reminder of the harsh inequalities and inhumane aspects of the country’s founding. It is also a powerful symbol of human dignity. Mr. Blakey said the burial ground showed how the individuals “celebrated their humanity.” He pointed to an example of a child who was found with a silver earbob, one “that they might have exchanged for some money, these impoverished people, but instead put it in the burial of a child.”
Some historians view the burial ground as one of the first institutions that Black people controlled for themselves in New York.
Recent efforts to remove informational exhibits on slavery have been erasing history, Mr. Blakey said. For example, this year, in response to an executive order from President Trump, the National Park Service took down an exhibit that discussed how George Washington owned enslaved people at the site of his home in Philadelphia.
“We’re being asked now to look away,” Mr. Blakey said. But looking closer can reveal a larger truth. “The African Burial Ground project provided the corporal evidence to defy the omissions and distortions of the past,” he said.
James Brown House
A Pub with a Past
The two-and-a-half story building near SoHo is currently home to the Ear Inn, a neighborhood bar beloved by locals and tourists alike.
The lore of the site’s revolutionary significance is tied to its previous ownership: Before it was Ear Inn, the home reportedly belonged to James Brown. Brown is believed to have been an enslaved man who was freed, and aided George Washington during the Revolutionary War.
But Brown’s story is not entirely clear, and the evidence to support the popular tale is scant. The 1851 painting, “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” is believed to have been created as an artistic and ennobled expression of freedom, not necessarily a precise representation of events.
There is debate over when exactly the house was constructed as well. Some preservationists believe it was built in the early 1800s, while it’s also often stated — including on the bar’s website — that it was erected around 1770.
The Landmarks Preservation Commission said in a report that the house was built in 1817. Rip Hayman, the owner of the building, said that he believed the house dated further back and that 1817 was when it “was entered into the city record.”
When it was being renovated around 1999, Mr. Hayman said, he worked with architectural historians who surveyed the building and found timber that had been burned and may have been salvaged out of the Great Fire of 1776.
The stories of Black people, women and people of color throughout history are often not well documented. But if James Brown was indeed a Black man who played a role in the Revolution, it might not be all that surprising. “The American Revolution was not just a fight between white men versus white men,” Mr. Dandia, the Brooklyn historian, said. “There were women that were involved on both sides. There were people of color involved on all sides.”
The Lovelace Tavern
The Tavern that was City Hall
Francis Lovelace, New York’s second English governor, built his own tavern around 1670. Next door was the Stadt Huys, which served as the first city hall in New York and was originally built as a tavern. When the Stadt Huys was declared unsafe for use in the 1690s, Lovelace’s tavern became the temporary city hall.
During an excavation in the Financial District around 1979, remnants of the Lovelace Tavern were unearthed.
Back then, it was the norm for government officials to gather in taverns, which played an important role in the early days of the city. “New York was a tavern town,” Mr. Dandia said. The tavern was where people met “to discuss and debate ideas around citizenship and belonging.”
