Where Is the Charging Bull Statue? (And Where Fearless Girl Actually Stands)
The exact spot
The bull is on the traffic island at the top of Bowling Green, where Broadway narrows into Whitehall Street, a block north of the old Custom House. If you're standing in the little park looking north up Broadway, it's right in front of you. The nearest subway is Bowling Green on the 4/5, which comes out about thirty seconds away, and Wall Street on the 4/5 or Rector Street on the 1 are both a few minutes' walk.
People get this wrong constantly, so it's worth saying plainly: the bull is not on Wall Street. Arturo Di Modica dropped it outside the New York Stock Exchange without permission in December 1989, and the city moved it to Bowling Green shortly after. It has been there ever since.
Fearless Girl moved
Fearless Girl spent 2017 and 2018 facing the bull at Bowling Green, and that's still the image most people have in their heads. She was taken from that spot in November 2018 and reinstalled in December on Broad Street, directly across from the New York Stock Exchange. The two statues are now about a five-minute walk apart, so if you want both, do the bull first and then walk up Broadway and cut east on Exchange Place or Wall Street to Broad.
When to go
Early. The bull is one of the most photographed objects in the city and by mid-morning there's a queue for the front of it and a separate queue for the back. Before 8am on a weekday you'll often have it to yourself, and the light coming up Broadway is better then anyway. Weekends are quieter than weekday lunchtimes down here, which is not true of most of Manhattan.
Doing it from 17 John Street
From our door, walk west on John Street to Broadway, turn left, and keep going south for about ten minutes. You'll pass Trinity Church on the right at Wall Street, which is worth two minutes in the churchyard. Bowling Green is at the end. It's a flat, straightforward walk, and it links up neatly with the waterfront: from the bull, Battery Park is another five minutes south and the Staten Island Ferry terminal is right there.
Most guests fold the bull into a morning that ends at the harbor. It takes about five minutes to look at, so treat it as a stop rather than a destination.