The New Haven Green is a 16-acre park that was completed in 1638. It is the central square of the nine-square plan that colonist John Brockett designed and surveyed for the Puritan settlers. In its early years it was called 'the marketplace' and held a watch house, a prison and a school.
For its first 150 years, the Green was the main burial ground for New Haven. The practice ended by 1821 and many headstones were moved to Grove Street Cemetery, but the remains were not. Between 4,000 and 5,000 people are estimated to still lie beneath the soil.
Three early 19th-century churches stand on the upper Green. They are the reason the Green was designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1970.