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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings

	CASTLE CLINTON NATIONAL MONUMENT New York	Castle Clinton National Monument
New York County, on the Battery, New York City; address: 1 Bowling Green New York, NY 10004. Castle Clinton National Monument

Castle Clinton, built as a New York Harbor defense fortification early in the 19th century, successively served as a promenade and entertainment center, a major immigrant receiving depot, and finally as a popular aquarium. Because of such varied usage, it symbolizes a century and a half of U.S. growth and change and is a unique link with the 19th century.

Castle Clinton was the last of a series of forts which, beginning in 1626, guarded the lower end of Manhattan Island and the great commercial city of New York. During the Napoleonic Era, some 2 years after the renewal of the conflict between England and France in 1803, the British began seizing U.S. ships and impressing U.S. sailors into the Royal Navy. The troubled months that followed were climaxed in mid-1807 by a British attack on the U.S. Frigate Chesapeake. In mass meetings in New York the citizens, realizing that the city was virtually defenseless, agitated for protection. The U.S. Government subsequently built four new fortifications in New York Harbor, one of which was the circular West Battery, some 200 feet off the southwest point of Manhattan Island. Built in 1808-11 and renamed Castle Clinton in 1815 in honor of Gov. DeWitt Clinton, it was designed for 28 guns in one tier of casemates. Its 8-foot-thick walls of red sandstone stood on a massive foundation of rough stone. Officers' quarters were located on each side of the sally port passageway; no barracks were provided for the enlisted garrison. After the War of 1812, in which Castle Clinton was never attacked, it became headquarters for the Third Military District, and in 1823 the Federal Government transferred it to the city of New York.

Castle Clinton National Monument, at the edge of Battery Park, on Manhattan Island, overlooks New York Harbor. Though constructed early in the 19th century for harbor defense purposes, Castle Clinton later served as an entertainment center, immigration depot, and aquarium.

The following year the fort, which the city leased to private interests, opened as Castle Garden, a place of public entertainment—for concerts, fireworks, balloon ascensions, and scientific demonstrations, among them the Morse telegraph in 1842. The interior of the fort was converted to a garden, which in time included a fountain. The gunrooms, decorated with marble busts and a panoramic mural, served as a promenade from which patrons, in boxes for eight, could watch the entertainment. The top of the fort's wall, where an awning covered a 14-foot-wide walkway, was another, even more popular, promenade. The officers' quarters became a saloon, which served liquors, confections, and ices.

The Marquis de Lafayette began his tour of the United States in 1824-25 from the Castle, where citizens of New York also later listened to orations by Daniel Webster and Henry Clay, viewed John Quincy Adams as he lay in state, and honored Presidents Jackson, Polk, and Tyler. In the 1840's the lessees enlarged and remodeled the fort as a theater, where they began to present operas in concert form. In 1850 it was the setting for the musical event of the century—P. T. Barnum's introduction of Jenny Lind, the "Swedish Nightingale," in her American debut.

Castle Clinton.

Under lease to the New York State Commissioners of Emigration, in 1855 the Castle became an immigrant receiving depot, operated with virtually no Federal controls. Through it passed the floodtide of the mid-century migration from Europe, consisting primarily of Irish and Germans, and after 1882 increased numbers of eastern and southern Europeans. The Castle protected the immigrants from the undesirables who roamed the wharves of New York and tried to take advantage of them; provided medical care; and dispensed information on travel routes and accommodations. Until 1890 more than 7 million immigrants, two out of every three arriving in the United States, passed through the Castle. In that year control shifted to the U.S. Superintendent of Immigration, and the Barge Office became the temporary landing depot, pending the opening in 1892 of a newer, more commodious center at Ellis Island.

In 1896, once again altered, the Castle opened as the New York City Aquarium. Millions visited it until 1941, when it was closed preparatory to being torn down to make room for the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel approaches. But determined New Yorkers saved the building, and destruction stopped short of the original fort walls. In 1946 Congress authorized Castle Clinton National Monument, and in 1950 the 1-acre monument was established. Restoration began at that time.