Originally known as ?The Marketplace?, the New Haven Green is a 16-acre privately owned park and recreation space at the heart of the city of New Haven, Connecticut. It is a traditional town green or commons (collectively owned part of a settlement usually used for grazing and sometimes for community events) created by Puritans intended to be used as the gathering place for some 100,000 people they believed will be saved when the ?Second Coming of Christ? occurs.

While the ?Second Coming? has not yet arrived, the New Haven Green was used as an outdoor ?living room? and meeting spot. The New Haven militia used the Green as their parade grounds before participating in the Battle of Lexington and Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill. During its first 150 years, the Green was utilized as the central interment grounds for the city?s residents until the practice was abolished by 1821. Many of the headstones were moved to the Grove Street Cemetery, however, the remains of some 5,000 to 10,000 dead people are still buried under the Green grounds.

The New Haven Green also accommodated a watch house, a prison and a school. The New Haven Jail, situated on the east side of the Green, was home to the Amistad survivors who were imprisoned here from September 1839 to August 1840. Thousands of spectators would gather to the Green and would each pay 12 and a half cents to be able to watch the Amistad prisoners who were brought there to do their exercise, while some would visit the jail to view them. Moreover, a series of statehouses were built but had been demolished in the New Haven Green.

The New Haven Green is divided into upper (northwest) and lower (southeast) halves. The upper half features three historic early 19th century churches erected on the east side of the Green between 1812 and 1816: Center Church and United Church (outstanding examples of the Federal Style) and Trinity Church (one of the first large Gothic Revival structures in America). While in the lower half of the green, the Bennett Memorial Fountain (built in 1907 and inspired by the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens) and the flagpole with granite World War I memorial are maintained.

At present, posterities of the city's earlier settlers keep ownership of the New Haven Green, a National Historic Landmark which is a venue for numerous public events, such as the Festival of Arts and Ideas, summer jazz and classical music concerts that attract hundreds of thousands of people. On normal days, typical daily park activities are a usual site there.