10. Castle Clinton National Monument

Location: South Ferry
Built: 1808-1811
Architects: Lt. Col. Jonathan Williams and John McComb, Jr.
National Register Number: 66000537
Listed: October 15, 1966
Visited: August 4, 2007



Castle Clinton is about as wide (200 feet) as its sister, Castle Williams, but for some reason not quite as tall and as imposing. Time has tamed it, anyway. If it ever looked fearsome, it looks largely harmless now; maybe not ready to crumble (though the open roof, a modern addition, sags a bit) but cracks show it to be mortal. Little bits of stucco still left on the pimple-cratered sandstone attesting to better uses, better times.



Better times? OK, OK, I know this stuff by heart now. Bear with me here. Like Castle Williams, Castle Clinton (originally called "West Battery") was built between 1808 and 1811 to defend New York against the hostile British, even though neither fort ever saw war. Then when the military was done with it, it became a fancy restaurant and entertainment center called "The Castle Garden." Then it became an opera house. Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale, sang there. (Oh, you don't know about Jenny Lind? Whatever.) Morse demonstrated the telegraph there, too. They added a roof. It looked fucking amazing. Then it became the "Emigrant Landing Depot," processing about eight million immigrants between 1855 to 1890, all in space about less volume than a Staples. Then the infinitely more commodious Ellis Island took over its immigration duties. Then it became an aquarium. (McKim, Mead, and White designed it.) It looked like this:



Then after it closed, Robert Moses demolished all the pretty additions and nearly the whole thing, too, because he wanted to build a bridge on top of it, and also because he was a gigantic crybaby douchebag who always had to have his way. Then it was declared a National Monument by Congress. Then, for almost 35 years, nothing. Then in 1975, hooray, it opened back up, right in time for the Bicenntenial, hooray! Hooray!



Today it's uh um well IT EXISTS, which is nice. People come here to buy tickets for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. It's also a very nice venue for free concerts during the summertime: I saw the Magnetic Fields there in August 2000 before a tremendous thunderstorm ended all the fun.



I suppose this is not nothing. I suppose this is nice. After all, hundreds of thousands of people pass through its walls every year. But undeniably it's playing a second banana role to it younger, sexier, leggier National Monument cousins. I was the only tourist on one of the NPS' guided tours two Sundays ago. No surprise there -- who wants to tour of what amounts to a really historical ticket booth? The aquarium was a more noble use. A mini-Ellis Island would be keen. (Eight Daddinos and four D'Addinos passed through this place!) Hell, I'd settle for a skatepark at this point.

6. Fort Jay

Location: Governors Island
Built: 1806-1809
Architect: Lt. Col. Jonathan Williams
National Register Number: 74001268
Listed: March 27, 1974
Visited: July 21, 2007



From space, a stolid five-point-star fortification. Up close, its scale is so enormous that the few people on the island can't make the spaces surrounding the non-descript interior barracks feel anything but desolate. It's the middle of the afternoon and yet a walk around the zigzagging moat, now with mowed grass instead of water, is spookily hushed. Only dragonflies pass by.

5. Castle Williams

Location: Governors Island
Built: 1807-1811
Architect: Lt. Col. Jonathan Williams
National Register Number: 72000863
Listed: July 31, 1972
Visited: July 21, 2007



Joe Schumacher: "Built to protect the city from the British in 1812. [Castle Williams], along with Castle Clinton on Manhattan, was so successful the British decided to burn a different city further south." Ha ha ha. (That city being, of course, Washington, DC.) In contrast to Castle Clinton's sexy post-conflict history as an opera house, immigration center, and after a handsome McKim, Mead & White renovation, aquarium, Castle Williams has only been given unglamorous adaptive re-uses by the military, including a prison. There's a campaign to convert it into a new Globe Theater, based on the designs of Foster + Partners, they of The Gherkin, The Glass Testicle, and uuuuhhh the Hearst Tower which is awesomely green but has no cute nickname. Great buildings all (I'm easily distracted by glitter), but I'm less positive about the design for this theater -- much as a new Globe is an alluring possibility (though is New York City lacking in dramatic venues?), every rendering occludes the fort's rustic red sandstone features and imposing profile.

Jonathan Williams gave his name not only to this fort but to Williamsburgh in Brooklyn. So you know he was a total dude.

1. Governors Island

Location: Governors Island
Built: 1806-1811
Architect: Lt. Col. Jonathan Williams
National Register Number: 85002435
Listed: February 4, 1985
Visited: July 21, 2007



Governors Island sits in front of the city's eyes and the back of the city's mind. 172 acres of island in the middle of New York Harbor, it surrounds dense thickets of New Jersey, Manhattan, and Brooklyn urbanity. And yet the island shares none of it, cut off from the surrounding landmasses, and groomed for over two centuries as a center for British, then American military operations rather than civilian life. It's been almost entirely off-limits to the ordinary citizen until the US Coast Guard ceased operations there in 1996, and even after control of about 13% of the island was ceded to the National Park Service, with the remainder put under the aegis of New York State, public access has thus far been sporadic, seasonal. This will change, and soon. 42 acres on the southern part of the island will soon be subject to sweeping redevelopment by the State of New York.

Five proposals for use of the land were unveiled in June, with a winning design to be announced this month; all of them assume the complete demolition of the structures currently standing, to be replaced by parkland featuring things like artificial mountains and marshes, agriculture, sporting facilities, research centers, and the like. The historic district, including the National Monument (composed of Castle Williams, Fort Jay -- more about them later -- and a few ancillary buildings), won't be touched (though maybe spiffened up a bit), but once the park becomes a reality, the rest of the island will likely receive more interest, and cease to be open secret it is now.