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Castle Clinton or Fort Clinton is a circular sandstone fort, now a national monument in Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan, New York City, USA.
[edit] History
Construction began in 1808 and was completed in 1811. The fort, known as West Battery (sometimes South-west Battery), was designed by architects John McComb Jr. and Jonathan Williams. It was built on a small artificial island just off shore.
West Battery was intended to complement the three-tiered Castle Williams (still extant) on Governors Island, which was East Battery, to defend New York City from British forces in the tensions that marked the run-up to the War of 1812, but never saw action in that or any war. Subsequent landfill expanded Battery Park, and incorporated the fort into the mainland of Manhattan Island.
As with all historic areas administered by the National Park Service, Castle Clinton National Monument was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966.
[edit] Changing names and uses
- Castle Clinton today is approximately two blocks west of where Fort Amsterdam stood almost 400 years ago, when New York City was still known by the Dutch name New Amsterdam.
- West Battery was renamed Castle Clinton in 1815, its current official name, in honor of New York City mayor Dewitt Clinton.
- The US Army stopped using the fort in 1821 and it was leased to New York City as a place of public entertainment and it opened as Castle Garden on July 3, 1824, a name by which it was popularly known for most of its existence, even to the present time. It served in turn as a promenade, beer garden/restaurant, exhibition hall, opera house, and theater. Designed as an open-air structure it was eventually roofed over to accommodate these uses.
- In 1850, the castle was the site of two extraordinarily successful concerts given for charity by the Swedish soprano Jenny Lind to initiate her American tour, managed by P. T. Barnum.
- In 1853 and 1854, the famous and very eccentric French conductor and composer of light music Louis-Antoine Jullien (1812-1860) gave dozens of very successful concerts mixing classical and light music.
- In 1855, it became the Emigrant Landing Depot as the New York State immigrant processing facility (the nation's first such entity) until 1890, when the Federal Government took over control of immigration processing, and opened the larger and more isolated Ellis Island facility for that purpose in 1892. Most of the immigration records burned in a pier fire during the transition to Ellis Island, but it is generally accepted that over 8 million immigrants (and as many as 12 million) were processed through Castle Garden. Prominent persons that were associated with the administration of the immigrant station included Gulian C. Verplanck, Friedrich Kapp, and John Alexander Kennedy.
- In 1896, Castle Garden became the site of the New York City Aquarium until 1941. For many years it was the city's most popular attraction, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. The structure was extensively altered and roofed over to a height of several stories, though the original masonry fort remained.
- In 1941 the politically powerful Park Commissioner Robert Moses wanted to tear the structure down completely, claiming that this was necessary to build a crossing from the Battery to Brooklyn. The public outcry at the loss of a popular recreation site and landmark stymied his effort at demolition, but the aquarium was closed and not replaced until Moses opened a new facility on Coney Island in 1957. See Brooklyn-Battery bridge.[1]
[edit] Castle Clinton National Monument
Although Castle Garden was designated a national monument on August 12, 1946, the law did not take effect until July 18, 1950, when the legislature and the governor of New York (Thomas Dewey) formally ceded ownership of the property to the Federal Government. A major rehabilitation took place in the 1970s. Today it is administered by the National Park Service and is a departure point for visitors to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. It appears much as it did in its earliest days, contains a museum, and is again called Castle Clinton.
[edit] Noted Castle Garden immigrants
This list is an incomplete sampling
[edit] Castle Garden bibliography
- Castle Garden as an Immigrant Depot, 1855-1890, by George J Svejda (1968)
- Castle Garden and Battery Park by Barry Moreno (2007)
- Guide to the New York Aquarium by Charles H. Townsend (1919)
- The Public Aquarium by Charles H. Townsend (1928)
[edit] Castle Garden/Castle Clinton in fiction
- "Castle Garden" by Bill Albert (novel)
- "The Penguin Pool Murder" by Stuart Palmer (1931 novel)
- "The Penguin Pool Murder" (1932 motion picture)
- "The Alienist" by Caleb Carr (novel)
- Castle Clinton appears in the video game Deus Ex as a terrorist stronghold the player must infiltrate.
- An American Tail (animated film)
[edit] References
- ^ Author: Caro, Robert A. The power broker: Robert Moses and the fall of New York. New York, Knopf, 1974. ISBN 0-394-72024-5
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