2. Bowling

Bowling is as old as the ancient Egyptians but it was such a staple of seventeenth century Dutch culture that Henry Hudson’s crew brought a form of lawn bowling with them on their voyage to find that ever-allusive Northwest Passage. When the city of New Amsterdam took hold, the Dutch frequently bowled on their all purpose cattle market/park/parade ground at the foot of their widest thoroughfare.

But that location wasn’t staked out for the soft green grass. It was for its convenient location across from a well-patronized tavern at number 2 Broadway that would later become New York’s first coffee house. In the 1670s when the English took over, they aptly name the green space “Bowling Green.” It was New York’s first municipal park. Also the first mention of nine-pin bowling appears in Washington Irving’s tale of that infamous Hudson Valley narcoleptic: Rip Van Winkle… a slothful man of Dutch descent.