Evacuation Day, celebrated exuberantly by Irish-Americans in the 19th century, memorializes George Washington’s return to Manhattan as the last of the British troops belatedly left (they had fully surrendered at Yorktown two years before). But when Washington got to Fort George just below Bowling Green, the British standard was still flying.

As legend has it, John Van Arsdale, an American former prisoner of war, finally managed to climb a flagpole mischievously greased by the British and replace the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes. A departing British warship passing through the Narrows fired a spiteful parting shot — purportedly the last round of the Revolutionary War.

Kenneth T. Jackson, a Columbia University history professor and the editor of “The Encyclopedia of New York City,” said, “Few Americans know that Brooklyn was the site of the biggest battle of the American Revolution — that the prison ships in New York harbor were the scene of the war’s greatest tragedy, that George Washington and the British commanders all saw New York City and the Hudson River Valley as the keys to victory, that New York City was the headquarters of both the British Army and the Royal Navy for all seven years of the conflict and that the war ended when the redcoats evacuated from Manhattan, and George Washington rode triumphantly down Broadway to say farewell to his officers at Fraunces Tavern.”

Ms. Chin still hopes to persuade her colleagues to approve the honorific before the Council approves new names, probably within a month or two.

Meanwhile, Mr. Baker suggested that the custodians of Bowling Green might at least erect a sign quoting an anonymous New Yorker who witnessed the original Evacuation Day.

“The troops just leaving us were as if equipped for show, and with their scarlet uniforms and burnished arms, made a brilliant display,” she wrote. “The troops that marched in, on the contrary, were ill clad and weather-beaten, and made a forlorn appearance. But then they were our troops, and as I looked at them, and thought upon all they had done for us, my heart and my eyes were full.”