Castle Clinton

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Castle Clinton National Monument

Location:	New York, USA
Nearest city:	New York, NY
Coordinates:	40°42′13″N, 74°1′1″W
Area:	1 acre (4,000 m²)
Established:	August 12, 1946
Total Visitation:	2,949,231 (in 2004)
Governing body:	National Park Service

Castle Clinton or Fort Clinton is a circular sandstone fort and national monument in Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan, New York City.

1 History
2 Changing names and uses
3 Castle Clinton National Monument
4 Noted Castle Garden Immigrants
5 Castle Garden Bibliography
6 Castle Garden/Castle Clinton in Fiction
7 External links

[edit] History

Construction began in 1808 and was completed in 1811 on an island known as West Battery (sometimes South-west Battery), and was designed by architects John McComb Jr. and Jonathan Williams.

West Battery was intended to complement Fort Williams (still extant) on Governors Island, which was East Battery to defend New York City from English 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 placed the fort on 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 in Battery Park, Historic American Buildings Survey

Castle Clinton

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 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 processeed through Castle Garden. Prominent persons that were associated with the adminsitration 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 builder Robert Moses wanted to tear the structure down completely, claiming that this was necessary to build the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. The public outcry at the loss of both a popular recreation and a 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.

During its tenure for non-military uses, it was extensively altered and roofed over to a height of several stories, though the original masonry fort remained. After the aquarium was ousted, most of the added structure was removed by the city's Park Commissioner Robert Moses in a failed and controversial attempt to demolish the structure in order to exact revenge on the men who blocked his plan to build a Brooklyn-Battery bridge.

[edit] Castle Clinton National Monument

Although Castle Garden was designated a national monument on August 12, 1946, the law did not take effect until 18 July 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. It appears much as it did in its earliest days, contains a museum, and is again called Castle Clinton.