New York’s City Hall Park: A Physical Space for New York City’s Public

Once known as The Common, City Hall Park has been home to the poor, the jailed, British soldiers and mercenaries and today reigns as the seat of municipal power for New York City. Used as physical space for public institutions and public performances, it has been constructed and transformed, most recently in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, as a show piece of history and municipality. Excavations have been used to exemplify the importance of this property and to provide hard facts about its history, transformations and those who are part of the story.