When City Hall Park Was 'The Fields,' a Tumultuous Place in American History

An 1858 stipple engraving by Scottish-American artist Alexander Hay Ritchie of Nathan Hale before his hanging in 1776 in The Fields, now City Hall Park. Collection of the Yale University Art Gallery

Back in the days when the Dutch ruled the city, what we now call City Hall Park was merely an open area outside of town that was called De Vlackte, or The Flat. Ordinary citizens used it to graze their cattle. The City Hall of the time was near the tip of Manhattan, well to the south of Nieuw Amsterdam's northern wall (located along today's Wall Street) that had been built in a vain attempt to keep out the British. Later, when the British had taken over the city and presided over its expansion beyond the wall, De Vlackte became known in British fashion as the Commons or, more often, The Fields. The name conjures up an image of pastoral tranquility. But the otherwise peaceful eight-and-a-quarter-acre stretch of ground was to be the scene of momentous and sometimes violent events.

The first altercations took place in the 1760s as New York became swept up in the agitation that would lead to the American Revolution. Radical anti-Britishers who called themselves Sons of Liberty had celebrated the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766 by erecting a flagpole in The Fields which they called the Liberty Pole, and they began staging rallies around it at which they pledged themselves to freedom.

One night a group of British redcoats who lodged nearby, and who resented the Sons' disrespect for authority, crept out and cut down the pole. The next day the Sons hastily put up a replacement. Three more times in 1766-67 the Britishers cut down the pole, and each time the Sons replaced it, girding it with iron bands to make it harder to cut.

The fourth pole lasted until one night in 1770 when the redcoats succeeded in removing it, depositing the pieces at the door of a tavern frequented by the Sons. Incensed, the Sons staged a mass meeting and vowed revenge. To maintain order the redcoats turned out in force, and before long the two sides were clashing at a spot near the corner of John and Gold streets. Soon more troops arrived to halt the fighting, but by that time several people on both sides had been wounded. The incident, known as the Battle of Golden Hill, has been called "the first blood of the Revolution"; the better-known Boston Massacre occurred a month later.

The area continued to be a popular spot for pro-independence rallies and was the scene of an impressive speech delivered one day in 1774 by a young fellow named Alexander Hamilton, who was a student at nearby King's College.

Two years later, in 1776, The Fields was the setting for two dramatic events. The first occurred on July 9, as General George Washington was making hasty preparations to defend New York against an expected British onslaught. A messenger arrived from Philadelphia carrying the text of the Declaration of Independence, which had just been voted by the Continental Congress, and Washington decided that a ceremony was needed to mark the occasion. He ordered his troops to assemble in The Fields and a number of nearby locations. As he sat silently on his horse facing his men, an aide shouted out the great lines that have become part of our heritage. A chaplain then read parts of Psalm 80, after which the regiments gave three cheers and were dismissed.

Less than three months later, a more somber happening took place nearby. On Sept. 15, British forces, having captured Long Island, invaded Manhattan and within two days were in control of the city. A few days after that, on Sept. 21, a 20-year-old American officer named Nathan Hale was captured behind British lines while gathering secret information on enemy fortifications and troop movements. Brought to the city jail that stood on the eastern boundary of The Fields, he was tried as a spy, found guilty, and hanged in the vicinity of Chambers Street. It was just before his execution that he remarked, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." A statue of Hale stands at the Broadway edge of today's park.

The same jail where Hale was tried became the scene of an ugly riot 12 years later when, with the war over and New York recovering swiftly, a mob of several hundred persons gathered to demand vengeance against two medical students who had been accused of robbing graves to obtain cadavers for dissections. This was the celebrated "Doctors' Riot," and when the crowds refused to disperse, the militia was called out, only to be greeted with a salvo of stones and brickbats. At this, the militia opened fire, killing four persons and wounding many others. The mob retreated.

Up to this point there were no large buildings in The Fields. A modest almshouse—or poorhouse—had been erected in 1735 for the indigent, and the city jail had been added in 1759. There may have also been some ramshackle "houses of ill fame" on the site, for it is known that in Oct. 1793 "a number of persons" gathered in The Fields and proceeded to demolish the unwanted structures.

But the look of the area would soon change markedly, for in 1802 the city announced that its existing City Hall, located at the corner of Broad and Wall streets, had proven inadequate for the expanding metropolis, and that a much larger structure would be erected in The Fields—which by this time was no longer outside the city limits. The new building, designed by JohnMcComb, Jr., and the French-born Joseph Francois Mangin, was completed in 1812, a felicitous blending of French Renaissance and Federal elements that have handsomely stood the test of time. The building's front and sides were finished in elegant white marble but the contractors used a less expensive red sandstone for the back—on the notion that nobody would ever look at the structure from that side as it was on the edge of town. (Many years later the city admitted its error and redid the back in marble.)

With the building in place, the area around it was officially named City Hall Park and suitably fenced and landscaped, ending forever the days of "The Fields."