Historic Battery Park & Castle Clinton

From early Dutch times the tip of Manhattan was fortified with the batteries of guns from which the Battery takes its name – first at the 17th-century Fort Amsterdam on the Custom House site, then at Castle Clinton. Fort Amsterdam disappeared long ago, but its rubble survives in the layers of landfill that eventually helped create 23 acres of Battery Park, in the process filling in the water separating Castle Clinton from the mainland. Today, The Battery Conservancy is implementing its award-winning Master Plan to recapture the park’s harbor-side splendor. Completed in 1811, as part of New York City’s harbor defense, Castle Clinton is among the oldest, most visited public buildings in Downtown. Transformed in 1824 into Castle Garden, showcasing balloonists, fireworks, and Italian opera companies, the former fort became the city’s leading place of entertainment, and its preferred location for grand entrances by visiting celebrities. From 1855 until 1890 Castle Garden served as America’s first official landing depot for new immigrants, “so well known in Europe,” according to the New York Times in 1874, “that few immigrants could be induced to sail for any other destination.” From 1896 to 1941, Castle Garden served as the New York Aquarium, in its day the world’s largest. 100 wall tanks and 7 large pools played home to 8,000 creatures including turtles, sea lions, sturgeon, alligators, crocodiles, manatees, porpoises, beavers, seacows, electric eels, and whales, many living in salt water pumped in from New York Bay. Today, Castle Clinton is a National Monument operated by the National Park Service.