Bowling green

History

The term bowling green is derived from its frequent association with the turfed, circular space used for ball games popular in Europe and America. European garden treatises, such as A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), noted that the term “bowling green” denoted several, interrelated meanings: a sunken, generally round, turfed lawn; a close-cropped playing field for bowls; and a recessed turfed area in the midst of a parterre or grove. In America before 1850, the term “bowling green” encompassed each of these three definitions, often in combination, and was applied to both public and private spaces. As a resolution by the New York Common Council in 1733 suggests, the bowling green’s ornamental and recreational functions often were inseparable. The term is complicated by the fact that lawn bowling took place on spaces other than bowling greens. For example, in 1611, Sir Thomas Dale disapproved of the bowlers’ language as they played in the streets of Jamestown, Va., and an 1826 engraving of the University of Virginia shows students bowling between the pavilions on the lawn, which was neither sunken nor circular in shape [Fig. 1].

The term “bowling green” in Anglo-American culture is clearly allied to its British counterpart, but the history of bowling greens as a landscape feature in the two countries differed in large part because of the fundamentally different social structure and land-holding practices in England. For instance, in England bowling was legally restricted to private gardens by the government, which feared archery was being neglected. By the time of the Civil War in 1688 “there were few gentry gardens which did not include a bowling green.”

In early America, bowling was not restricted in the same way. While images of public bowling greens are relatively rare in the colonial period, descriptions indicate that public bowling greens, such as those in Williamsburg, Va., Boston, and New York contributed to the beauty of the town or city and provided a venue for social gatherings and recreation [Fig. 2]. As early as the 1670s, tavern owners in New York provided bowls, ninepins, or skittles for their customers, resulting in the Common Council’s passage in 1676 of new Sabbath laws, which declared “all and Every Wine and Rum or Beare Sellas [beer sellers] who shall permitt any Person Upon the Sabbath day to Drinke or Game In their houses Gardens or Yards Shall for ye first offense forfeict five and Twenty Guildars.” Bowling greens toward the end of the eighteenth century were commonly operated at taverns, hotels, and public pleasure grounds as part of the growing competition for public entertainment. The Centre House Tavern at Centre Square in Philadelphia and Chatsworth Garden in Baltimore are two such examples. As the popularity of bowling declined in the early nineteenth century, public greens that had been used for sport often kept their names and became small enclosed parks, such as Bowling Green at the end of Broadway in New York [Fig. 3]. The flat, open space of a bowling green also made it ideal for other recreational purposes, such as a horse race held in Alexandria, Va., reported in 1790.

In private settings, as well, the bowling green combined ornament and recreation. The paucity of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century examples of bowling greens on private estates suggests that only those colonists who had substantial resources, such as William Byrd II and William Middleton, devoted the labor and space necessary to construct the turfed greens. It has been argued that genteel sports—such as lawn bowling, fencing, and riding—in developing their particular rules, modes of performance, and conventions, helped to define the colonial social structure. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the practice of constructing bowling greens on estates of the economic and political elite grew as more gentry had the luxury of expending their efforts on ornamental and recreational landscape features. Examples include Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest in Bedford County, Va., Charles and Margaret Tilghman Carroll’s plantation, Mount Clare, in Baltimore, and George Washington’s Mount Vernon. The praise garnered by these landscape features suggests that bowling greens carried with them connotations of leisure and sophistication and that they were visible markers of their owners’ status.

According to visual and textual evidence, bowling greens varied in their physical form and placement within the ga rden. One exa mple of a bowling green de pic ted as a recessed area can be found in Charles Varlé’s design for the town of Bath, in which he included a bowling green within a parterre at “H” [Fi g. 4]. Eliza Lucas Pinckney in 1743 also described the bowling green as sunk below the level of the rest of the garden. Private bowling greens could be circular, as at Mount Vernon [Fi g. 5], or rectangular, as at the estate of John Penn in Philadelphia [Fig. 6], and they were generally near the house. Their flat, green swath of turf made an attractive foreground for a house and was related to the feature of lawns (see Lawn). In addition, the bowling green [Fig. 7] provided an excellent viewing platform from which to gaze over a prospect. In fact, by the second half of the eighteenth century, the term had entered the language of landscape description at a metaphorical level, when P. Campbell in 1793 referred to an area that was “flat as a bowling green.”

-- Elizabeth Kryder-Reid

Texts

Usage

• Sanford, Robert, July 1666, describing a Native American settlement near Port Royal, S.C. (Salley, ed., 1911: 100)

“Found as to the forme of building in every respect like that of Eddistowe, with a plaine place before the great round house for their bowling recreation, att th’end of which stood a faire wood-den Crosse of the Spaniards ereccon.”

• Byrd, William, II, 26 April 1720 and 4–5 May 1721, describing the bowling green in Williamsburg, Va. (Wright and Tinling, eds., 1958: 399, 525–26)

“After dinner we walked to the bowling green where I gave the woman a pistole to encourage the green. . . .

“Then we walked to the bowling green and from thence to Colonel Bassett’s. . . .

“After dinner we walked to the bowling green where I lost five shillings.”

• Byrd, William, II, 16 March 1721, describing Westover, seat of William Byrd II, on the James River, Va. (Wright and Tinling, eds., 1958: 507)

“This day we began to turf the bowling green.”

• Common Council, 12 March 1733, describing New York, N.Y. (quoted in Hedrick 1988: 64)

“Resolved that this Corporation will lease a piece of Land lying at the lower end of Broadway fronting to the Fort, to some of the inhabitants of the said Broadway in order to be inclosed . . . to make a Bowling Green thereon, for the Beauty and Ornament of said Street as Well as for the Recreation & Delight of the Inhabitants of This City.”

• Pinckney, Eliza Lucas, c. May 1743, describing Crowfield, plantation of William Middleton, vicinity of Charleston, S.C. (1972: 61)

“Opposite on the left hand is a large square boleing green sunk a little below the level of the rest of the garden with a walk quite round composed of a double row of fine large flowering Laurel and Catulpas which form both shade and beauty.”

• Anonymous, 12 September 1754, describing a property for sale in Charleston, S.C. (South Carolina Gazette)

“TO BE SOLD by the Subscriber, the House up the Path wherein he now liveth, together with all the Out houses, Bowling Green, Gardens, and other Land thereto belonging.”

• Fisher, Daniel, 25 May 1755, describing Centre House (Tavern), Philadelphia, Pa. (quoted in Pecquet du Bellet 1907: 2:802)

“In coming home, I went into a Tavern called the ‘Centre House,’ as being seated in the very midst of the original Plan of the first intended City. . . . Here is a Bowling Green.”

• Ecuyer, Capt. Simeon, April 1764, describing Fort Pitt, Pittsburgh, Pa. (quoted in Stotz 1970: 14)

“the deer park, the little garden, and the bowling green, I am just now making into one garden, it will be extreamly [sic] pretty and very useful to this garrison, the King’s garden will be put in proper order.”

• Ambler, Mary M., 1770, describing Mount Clare, plantation of Charles and Margaret Tilghman Carroll, Baltimore, Md. (1937: 166)

“took a great deal of Pleasure in looking at the Bowling Green . . . the House where this Gentn & his Lady reside in the Sumer stands upon a very High Hill & has a fine Veiw [sic] of Petapsico River You Step out of the Door into the Bowlg Green from which the Garden Falls & when You stand on the Top of it there is such an Uniformity of Each side as the whole Plantn seems to be laid out like a Garden.”

• Carter, Robert, 1770 and 1772, describing the garden at Sabine Hall, estate of Landon Carter, Richmond County, Va. (quoted in Martin 1991: 116)

“[March 1770] I had my Ewes first on my bowling green yesterday and then on the hill sides. . . .

“[25 April 1772] Talbot set to work yesterday to shave the bowling green, he seems to do it well, but he is very slow.”

• Carroll, Charles (of Annapolis), 1775, describing Carroll Garden, Annapolis, Md. (Maryland Historical Society, A. E. Carroll Papers)

“Examine the Gardiner strictly as to . . .Whether he is an expert at levelling, making grass plots & Bowling Greens, Slopes, & turfing them well.”

• Braxton, Col. George, 1776–81, describing his garden in King and Queen County, Va. (quoted in Horner 1898: 147–48)

“I agreed wth Alexander Oliver Gardener to make a Courtyard before my Door according to Art; and after the best manner I shall think proper, that is likewise to finish my falling Garden wth a Bolling Green.”

• Washington, George, 1785, describing Mount Vernon, plantation of George Washington, Fairfax County, Va. (Jackson and Twohig, eds., 1978: 4:199, 215)

“[30 September] Began again to Smooth the Face of the Lawn, or Bolling Green on the West front of my House—what I had done before the Rains, proving abortive. . . .

“[28 October] Finished levelling and Sowing the lawn in front of the Ho[use] intended for a Bolling Green—as far as the Garden Houses.”

• Anonymous, 20 September 1790, describing in the Virginia Gazette and Alexander Advertiser a bowling green in Alexandria, Va. (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; hereafter CWF)

“THE VIRGINIA JOCKEY-CLUB RACES will commence at the Bowling Green on the second Tuesday in October next, and will continue three days.”

• Anonymous, 25 June 1792, describing a property for sale in New York, N.Y. (New York Diary or Loudon’s Register)

“A bowling green is in front, and stables, wood house and other necessary offices in the rear of the house.”

• Drayton, John, 1793, describing the Battery, New York, N.Y. (quoted in Deák 1988: 1:130)

“‘The flag staff rises from the midst of a stone tower, and is decorated on the top with a golden ball: and the back part of the ground is laid out in smaller walks, terraces, and a bowling green.— Immediately behind this, and overlooking it, is the government house; built at the expence of the state.”

• Campbell, P., 1793, describing the journey from Frederick Town to Quebec (p. 89)

“In this way [by canoe] we kept on our course, and on the first day passed many spacious fertile islands, averaged at about 100 acres extent each, flat as a bowling green, mostly covered with the loftiest hard timber imaginable, delightfully situated, the soil deep and of the richest quality, the country closely inhabited.”

• Niemcewicz, Julian Ursyn, June 1798, describing Mount Vernon, plantation of George Washington, Fairfax County, Va. (quoted in Martin 1991: 140)

“Two bowling greens, a circular one near the house, the other very large and irregular, form the courtyard in front of the house. All kinds of trees, bushes, flowering plants, ornament the two sides of the court. . . . The path which runs all around the bowling green is planted with a thousands kind[s] of trees, plants and bushes; crowning them are two immense Spanish chestnuts that Gl. Wash planted himself.”

• Martin, William Dickinson, 5 May 1805, describing the court house in Caroline County, Va. (CWF)

“Just at Sunrise we breakfasted at Caroline Court House, perhaps better known by the Bowling-Green, having travelled fifty miles the preceding night. This place is called the Bowling Green, from the extensiveness & evenness . . . of its plane, & high state of Cultivation. It was formerly the property of Mr. John Holmes, who has added so much to the stock of Horses in America, by his importation. It descended to his son on his death, & for many years has been well known in the racing world.”

• Hemings, J., 28 August 1825, describing Poplar Forest, property of Thomas Jefferson, Bedford County, Va. (CWF)

“The Area of the Triangle made by the Wash-House, Stable & School-House is perfectly levil, & designed for a bowling-Green, laid out in rectangular Walks which are paved with Brick, & covered over with burnt Oyster-Shells.”

• Lambert, John, 1816, describing the vicinity of Charleston, S.C. (2:231)

“The road was narrow, and nearly as level as a bowling-green; the soil varied in different places, but in general it was a light sandy earth, and free from stones.”

• Buckingham, James Silk, 1841, describing New York, N.Y. (1:38–39)

“Of the public places for air and exercise with which the Continental cities of Europe are so abundantly and agreeably furnished, and which London, Bath, and some other of the larger cities of England contain, there is a marked deficiency in New-York. Except the Battery, which is agreeable only in summer—the Bowling Green is a confined space of 200 feet long by 150 broad; the Park, which is a comparatively small spot of land (about ten acres only) in the heart of the city, and quite a public thoroughfare; Hudson Square, the prettiest of the whole, but small, being only about four acres; and the open space within Washington Square, about nine acres, which is not yet furnished with gravel-walks or shady trees—there is no large place in the nature of a park, or public garden, or public walk, where persons of all classes may take air and exercise. This is a defect which, it is hoped, will ere long be remedied, as there is no country, perhaps, in which it would be more advantageous to the health and pleasure of the community than this to encourage, by every possible means, the use of air and exercise to a much greater extent than either is at present enjoyed.”