Six years after the monument’s installation, in July 1776, patriots rebelling against what they viewed as a symbol of British oppression tore down George’s likeness. When John Adams visited New York in 1774, he admired the “ beautiful ellipsis of land, nailed in with solid iron, in the center of which is a statue of his majesty on horseback, very large, of solid lead gilded with gold, standing on a pedestal of marble, very high.” (No contemporary images of the Bowling Green statue survive, but written accounts offer a sense of its appearance.)
Public sculpture was a rarity in New York-and every other North American colony-and the city marked the statues’ installation with grand celebrations. Statues of both men arrived in Manhattan in 1770 and soon went up on their pedestals: Pitt on Wall Street and George in Bowling Green, a small park at the southernmost tip of the island. Many colonists credited George, together with the British politician William Pitt the Elder, for the repeal of the much-reviled Stamp Act. New York City was a vital port in the burgeoning British Empire, and the assembly envisioned the sculpture as a thank you to the king. A decade before the Revolutionary War, when colonial Americans had yet to become disenchanted with British rule, the New York Assembly ordered an equestrian statue of George III from the workshop of London sculptor Joseph Wilton.
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