The modern game of bocce (also sometimes written as “bocci” or “boccie”) developed in Italy during the 19th century, and now has well-defined regulations. Played on a court of crushed stone, rather than on the grass lawns used in English lawn bowling, bocce players attempt to throw balls closest to a target ball called a “pallino” (as opposed to lawn bowling's “jack”.) Although it is enjoyed by all people, initially bocce was played predominantly by Italian communities, especially those in Philadelphia and New York.

The first bocce courts in New York City parks were established by Mayor La Guardia in 1934 at Thomas Jefferson Park in Manhattan, in the middle of what was then a predominantly Italian neighborhood. A Parks Department press release from the time noted, “In order to furnish his former neighbors an opportunity of playing the popular Italian game of Bocce, Mayor La Guardia has requested the Park Department to install courts in Thomas Jefferson Park at 111th Street and First Avenue, Manhattan.” The Parks Department built many new playgrounds during this era, and bocce courts were included at many of these sites.

The popularity of bocce meant that by the 1950s, bocce courts had became common features alongside shuffleboard courts, handball courts, and horseshoe pits in playgrounds across the city. The more “passive” sort of recreation that bocce encouraged fit with the philosophy of the Moses Administration to create all-purpose areas that welcomed users of all ages and interests. By the 1950s, Parks Department counted bocce as one of the “popular activities that lure New Yorkers to out-of-town vacation resorts [that] can be found within a reasonable distance of every community in the five boroughs.”

In 1958, bocce courts could be found at 27 parks across the city. Also in 1958, Parks hosted its first bocce tournament, sponsored by the Schaefer Brewing Company. Teams competed in elimination matches at the borough level, and the ten successful teams moved on to citywide finals held at Louis Cuvillier Playground in East Harlem. Manhattan residents Ciro Carlino and Peter Favuzza won the tournament, earning wristwatches donated by Schaefer. The report in The New York Times noted that the 50-year-old Carlino's “curving wizardry with the boccia drew cheers that rent the air. Without much of a wind-up, he rolls the boccia fifty feet, and then it makes a vertical turn, practically hugging the pallini.” Parks bocce tournaments resumed in 1995 and have been held ever since; each September, 80 teams of four compete for borough championships and the chance to compete at the citywide finals.

Fifty years later, bocce seems just as popular as it was when Mayor La Guardia decreed the first courts. Today, there are bocce courts at 39 parks across the city. One of the most famous is at William F. Moore Park in Queens— known as “Spaghetti Park” to locals—where the Corona Italian enclave decorated its local bocce court with festive lighting, and where the court in the middle of the square literally serves as the center of the neighborhood, attracting young and old whenever the weather permits. In addition, a contingent of Maltese immigrants comes together to play bocce at J.J. Walker Park near the marble sarcophagus on the north side of the park that was dedicated in 1834 to three fallen firemen.