NYC Walking Tour - Battery Park Manhattan

Jenny Lind the Swedish Nightingale

September 11, 1850 at Castle Clinton

Battery Park is a 25-acre (10 hectare) public park located at the Battery, the southern tip of Manhattan Island in New York City, facing New York Harbor. The Battery is named for artillery batteries that were positioned there in the city's early years in order to protect the settlement behind them. At the north end of the park is Castle Clinton, the often re-purposed last remnant of the defensive works that inspired the name of the park; Pier A, formerly a fireboat station; and Hope Garden, a memorial to AIDS victims. At the other end is Battery Gardens restaurant, next to the United States Coast Guard Battery Building. Along the waterfront, ferries depart for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and there is also a New York Water Taxi stop. The park is also the site of the East Coast Memorial which commemorates U.S. servicemen who died in coastal waters of the western Atlantic Ocean during World War II, and several other memorials.

Within the park lies Castle Clinton, an American fort built on a small artificial off-shore island immediately prior to the War of 1812 and named for mayor DeWitt Clinton. When the land of Battery Park was created, it encircled and incorporated the island.

The fort became property of the city after the war and was renamed Castle Garden. Leased by the city, it became a popular promenade and beer garden. Later roofed-over, it became one of the premier theatrical venues in the United States and contributed greatly to the development of New York City as the theater capital of the nation.

After a New York clipper had finished loading, it was the custom for her to drop down the East River and anchor off Battery Park, then a fashionable resort, where she would remain for a few hours to take her crew on board and usually to ship between five and ten tons of gunpowder ... The people who gathered at Battery Park to see a clipper ship get underway came partly to hear the sailors sing their sea songs, or chanties  which originated early in the nineteenth century, with the Negro stevedores at Mobile and New Orleans ... As the ship pays off, and gathers way in the slack water, the longshoremen and runners tumble over the side into the Whitehall boats, the crowd at Battery Park gives three parting cheers, the ensign is dipped, and the clipper is on her way to Cape Horn.

The migration of the city's elite uptown increased concurrently with the mass European emigration of the middle 19th century. As immigrants settled the Battery area, the location was less favorable to theater patrons and Castle Garden was closed. The structure was then made into the world's first immigration depot, processing millions of immigrants beginning in 1855 - almost 40 years before its successor, Ellis Island, opened its doors. This period coincided with immigration waves resulting from the Great Hunger in Ireland (a.k.a., "The Irish Famine") and other pivotal European events. The structure then housed the New York Aquarium until the 1940s, when it was threatened with destruction. It is currently a National Monument known again by its original name, and managed by the National Park Service. In addition to a small history exhibit and occasional concerts, the fort is the site where ferry tickets are sold to visit Liberty and Ellis islands.