Want to walk in the footsteps of American Revolutionaries? You can every day in Lower Manhattan

Standing at the north end of Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan, tourists’ eyes are focused on a chunky slab of horned, snorting bronze on four hooves.The Charging Bull.

Visitors from the around world wait — not always patiently — for their turn to capture the 7,100‑ pound sculpture’s best angles: namely, the view from behind, where the animal’s masculine attributes are on full display, offering undeniable visual confirmation that this is, indeed, a bull and not a cow.But few tourists (or New Yorkers, for that matter) take note of the small park nearby, the oldest public park in New York City.Yet Bowling Green, like many other sites in Manhattan, saw key events that forever shaped the early days of the United States and truly capture the spirit of the American Revolution.More than 250 years ago, this part of the island known as “Manahatta” to its original inhabitants, the Lenape, was humming with industry.

New York served as a key port of trade and commerce before and during the Colonial era.When John Adams came through in 1774, he wrote in his diary of the “Opulence and Splendor” of the city and, later in that same paragraph, added that New Yorkers “talk very loud, very fast, and altogether.

If they ask you a Question, before you can utter 3 Words of your Answer, they will break out upon you, again — and talk away.”In the spring and summer of 1776, Manhattan served as the headquarters of the newly established Continental Army and was buzzing with news of the impending arrival of British ships.Hundreds of vessels and tens of thousands of British soldiers were ready to pounce on the strategic gem that was Manhattan.

The devastating Battle of Brooklyn on August 27, 1776 — the largest battle of the Revolutionary War — was followed by the British landing at Kip’s Bay on September 15.The British made themselves right at home in New York for seven years, until the end of the war.While thoughts of walking in the steps of American Colonial...