Castle Clinton National Monument

Which once-famous downtown monument has led at least three different lives, and most New Yorkers have never heard of it? Castle Clinton, now run by the National Parks Service and used primarily to sell tickets for the ferries to Liberty Island and Ellis Island, was once somebody important. Several somebodies, in fact. Located in Battery Park, down by the water, the Castle also used to be a bit bigger and more imposing than it is today.

Castle Clinton was originally built as a fort to defend New York City's large and very vulnerable harbor against British invaders in the War of 1812. It worked; they didn’t attack the city but instead targeted Washington, D.C., and famously set fire to the capital.

The fort was one of several built around the city at that time (others included one on Bedloe's (now Liberty) Island, and one on Governor's Island. Castle Clinton was constructed on an artificial spit of land just off the tip of Manhattan. Students from Columbia College were among the volunteers who put together the circular structure, using the local rough brownstone as building material.

Castle Clinton was named after the mayor at the time, DeWitt Clinton (in his career, he was also a U.S. senator and New York's Governor, and figured prominently in New York and U.S. history). As it happened, the fortification was never used as a defense. But it came in very handy as a venue for ceremonial purposes. In 1824, a gala for the Marquis de Lafayette was held there; and later that year, under the new name of Castle Garden, it became a concert venue with outdoor seating on the roof. Later, the top of the fort was enclosed, becoming a second story, and new wooden walls were added onto the brownstone. The legendary Jenny Lind, the "Swedish Nightingale," performed there in 1850, brought to America as a virtual unknown by the impresario PT Barnum; after her performances, she was famous, and so was Castle Clinton.

Five years later, in 1855, the lease reverted to the city and Castle Clinton took on yet another persona. As the Castle Garden Emigrant Landing Depot, it was America's first immigrant processing station -- in response to the increased number of people flocking to the U.S. from other countries, especially Ireland (mostly due to the Potato Famine) and Germany (displaced by revolution at home). Nearly 8 million immigrants would pass through Castle Garden over the next 34 years, until Ellis Island took over the job under the federal government.

In its next role, Castle Clinton became the home of the New York City Aquarium, designed by McKim, Mead and White, and it remained an aquarium until 1941, when the fish moved to Coney Island. Then the powerful Robert Moses got the castle in his sights, aiming to tear it down to put up a huge bridge there. Preservationists went to bat, and, after a long battle, saved what was left of the castle, now mostly back to its original structure. Various additions from its days as an immigration center, an aquarium and a theater had been stripped away.

The National Parks Service has since restored the Castle and put it to pragmatic use as a ticketing center for the ferries. Outside the
structure, which is now a national monument, stands a statue, The Immigrants by Luis Sanguino, reminding us of its earlier life. The Castle Clinton National Monument is open to the public.

By Kathie