https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Clinton#

Castle Clinton (also known as Fort Clinton and Castle Garden) is a restored circular sandstone fort within Battery Parkat the southern end of Manhattan in New York City, United States. Built from 1808 to 1811, it was the first American immigration station, predating Ellis Island. More than 7.5 million people arrived in the United States at Fort Clinton between 1855 and 1890. Over its active life, it has also functioned as a beer garden, exhibition hall, theater, and public aquarium. The structure is a New York City designated landmark and a U.S. national monument, and it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Fort Clinton was originally known as the West Battery or the Southwest Battery, occupying an artificial island off the shore of Lower Manhattan. Designed by John McComb Jr., with Jonathan Williams as consulting engineer, the fort was garrisoned in 1812 but was never used for warfare. In 1824, the New York City government converted Fort Clinton into a 6,000-seat entertainment venue known as Castle Garden, which operated until 1855. Castle Garden then served as an immigrant processing depot for 35 years. When the processing facilities were moved to Ellis Island in 1892, Castle Garden was converted into the first home of the New York Aquarium, which opened in 1896 and continued operating until 1941. The fort was expanded and renovated several times during this period.

In the 1940s, New York City parks commissioner Robert Moses proposed demolishing Fort Clinton as part of the construction of the nearby Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel. This led to a prolonged debate over the fort’s preservation, as well as the creation of the Castle Clinton National Monument in 1946. The National Park Service took over the fort in 1950. After several unsuccessful attempts to restore the fort, Castle Clinton reopened in 1975 following an extensive renovation. Since 1986, it has served as a visitor center and a departure point for ferries to the Statue of Liberty National Monument.

Castle Clinton stands slightly west of where Fort Amsterdam was built in 1626, when New York City was known by the Dutch name New Amsterdam.^[4] Fort Amsterdam was demolished by 1790 after the American Revolutionary War.^[5][6][7]Proposals for a new fort were made after two separate war scares involving Britain and France in the 1790s, but neither plan was ultimately carried out.^[8] By 1805, there were growing tensions between Britain and the U.S., marking the run-up to the War of 1812. Late that year, Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Williams of the United States Army Engineers began planning a series of fortifications in New York Harbor.^[9] Williams was part of a group of three commissioners who, in 1807, submitted a report that recommended the construction of such fortifications.^[9][10]

Fort Clinton, originally known as West Battery and sometimes as Southwest Battery,^[11][12][13] was built on an artificial island, created just off shore when the fort was built.^[12] Construction began in 1808, and the fort was completed in 1811,^{[5][11][14][15]} although modifications continued through the 1820s.^[16] Designed by John McComb Jr. with Jonathan Williams as consulting engineer,^[17][18] West Battery was roughly circular with a radius of approximately 92 feet (28 m). About one-eighth of the circle had a straight wall instead of a curved wall.^[12][16] The walls were made of red sandstonequarried in New Jersey.^[19] The fort had 28 thirty-two-pounder cannons.^[12][16] A wooden bridge led from the fort to the rest of Manhattan.^[20] West Battery was intended to complement the three-tiered Castle Williams, the East Battery, on Governors Island.^[21]

The fort was completed in late 1811, and it was garrisoned in 1812.^[22] However, the fort was never used for warfare,^[21]and British and American forces signed a peace treaty in February 1815.^[23] By then, West Battery was renamed Fort Clinton in honor of New York City Mayor DeWitt Clinton (who eventually became Governor of New York).^[12][5][21]The castle proper was converted to administrative headquarters for the Army. Simultaneously, at the end of the war, there was a public movement to build a park in the Battery area.^[21] A 1816 proposal to construct two small office buildings at Fort Clinton was canceled due to public opposition, and the castle lay dormant for three years.^[24][21] The Common Council of New York proposed in May 1820 that the United States government transfer ownership of the castle to the city government, but the United States Congress declined to pass legislation to that effect.^[21]

By 1820, Fort Clinton was being used as a paymaster’s quarters and storage area.^[23] The United States Army stopped using the fort in 1821, and it was ceded to the city by an act of Congress in March 1822.^[23][25][26] By then, the bridge leading to Fort Clinton was frequently used by fishermen who were catching fish from the bridge,^[12] which was connected to the shore at the foot of Broadway.^[20]

The fort was leased to the New York City government as an entertainment venue in June 1824;^[25] the city originally paid $1,400 a year for five years.^[27] The city government subleased the fort to Francis Fitch, Arthur Roorbach, and J. Rathbone.^[13] Fort Clinton became Castle Garden, which served as a beer garden, exhibition hall, and theater. The venue contained 50 boxes, each with a table and eight seats. Atop Castle Garden was a circular promenade with a canopy above it.^[13] Castle Garden was surrounded by a gravel promenade and shrubbery atop a seawall.^[27] The New-York Daily Tribune wrote that the fort “afterward became associated with scenes of peace and popular amusement”.^[28] One critic described Castle Garden in 1828 as “a favored place of public resort”.^[27]

The fort reopened as Castle Garden on July 3, 1824.^[13][25] One of the fort’s first events was in September 1824, when 6,000 people attended an event honoring General Lafayette.^[13][29] Over the years, the fort hosted other political figures such as U.S. presidents Andrew Jackson,^[30] John Tyler,^[29] and James K. Polk,^[29] as well as Hungarian governor-president Lajos Kossuth.^[29][30] Inventor Samuel Morse hosted a demonstration of a telegraph machine at Castle Garden in 1835.^[30][31] Around 1845, Castle Garden was converted into a theater when a roof was built above the fort’s interior.^[32][33][34] The structure contained 6,000 seats.^[32] Officials were planning to expand the nearby Battery Park by 1848, adding landfill around Castle Garden to bring the park to 24 acres (9.7 ha).^[35][36]

In 1850, Swedish soprano Jenny Lind gave her first performances in the United States with two concerts at Castle Gardens;^[37][38] tickets for these concerts cost up to $225 (equivalent to $8,504 in 2024).^[39] A year later, Castle Garden started selling concert tickets at “popular prices” of up to 50 cents (equivalent to $19 in 2024).^[40] In the early 1850s, European dancing star Lola Montez performed her “tarantula dance”,^[41] and Louis-Antoine Jullien gave dozens of successful concerts mixing classical and light music.^[41] The Max Maretzek Italian Opera Company staged the New York premieres of two operas at Castle Garden: Gaetano Donizetti‘s Marino Faliero on June 17, 1851, and Giuseppe Verdi‘s Luisa Miller on July 20, 1854.^[42][43][44]

The fort was leased to Theodore J. Allen for five years on May 1, 1854. Under the terms of the lease, Allen could expand the island around Castle Garden, but he could not infill the channel between Castle Garden and Battery Park.^[45]

Castle Garden served as the first immigration depot in the U.S. from 1855 to 1890.^[31][46] Most of the fort, except for the section along the shoreline, was surrounded by a 1,000-foot-long (300 m) wooden fence.^[47][48] The fence, measuring 12 or 13 feet (3.7 or 4.0 m) high, was intended to keep out unauthorized immigrants.^[49][50] At the center of the fort was the waiting area, known as the rotunda.^[51] The immigrant registration depot included a quadrangle of desks arranged around this waiting area, as well as restrooms flanking the main entrance.^[52][53] The waiting area also had wooden benches. Although there are no precise figures for the capacity of the waiting area, various sources give a capacity of between 2,000 and 4,000.^[54] An enclosed balcony was installed around the waiting area circa 1869.^[55] The residential outbuildings around the fort became offices.^[47][56]

Before being processed at Castle Garden, immigrants underwent medical inspections at the Marine Hospital on Staten Island, where ill immigrants were quarantined.^[57][58] Those who passed their medical inspection boarded a steamship, which traveled to a dock along the northern side of Castle Garden; the dock faced away from Battery Park, preventing immigrants from entering Manhattan before they had been processed. Immigrants were inspected a second time before entering the fort. Inside the depot, a New York state emigration clerk registered each immigrant and directed them to another desk, where a second clerk advised each immigrant about their destination. Each of the immigrants then received a bottle of bathwater and returned to the dock, where their baggage was collected.^[57] The New York Central Railroad and the New York and Erie Railroad sold train tickets at Castle Garden as well.^[58][59]

Many of Castle Garden’s original immigrant passenger records were stored at Ellis Island, where they were destroyed in a fire in 1897.^[60] Sources cite 7.5 million^[61] or 8 million immigrants as having been processed at Castle Garden.^[49][62]These account for the vast majority of the nearly 10 million immigrants who passed through the Port of New Yorkbetween 1847 and 1890.^[63][64][a] The majority of immigrants processed at Castle Garden were from European countries, namely Denmark, England, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Russia, Scotland, and Sweden.^[66][67] The facility’s name was pronounced Kesselgarten by German immigrants and by Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews. The word kesselgarten became a generic term for any situation that was noisy, confusing or chaotic, or where a “babel” of languages was spoken (a reference to the multitude of languages heard spoken by the immigrants from many countries at the site).^[68] In 2005, The New York Times estimated that one-sixth of all Americans were descended from an immigrant who had passed through Castle Garden.^[49]

1850s and 1860s

The New York state government’s Board of Emigration Commissioners had been established in 1847 to operate medical facilities and a registration center for immigrants. Although the board had acquired the Marine Hospital on Staten Island soon after its establishment, their efforts to open a registration center were unsuccessful for several years.^[69] Prior to the establishment of the registration center, unethical ticket-booking agents for transport lines frequently approached newly arrived immigrants, only to abscond with the immigrants’ savings.^[49] The board took over Allen’s lease of Castle Garden in May 1855 and made some modifications,^[36] leasing the fort for $8,000 annually (equivalent to $269,971 in 2024).^[70]Several local residents attempted to prevent the fort from being converted into an immigrant registration depot, claiming that the state government’s lease was illegal and that the newly arrived immigrants would spread disease.^[50][71] A judge for the state’s Superior Court ruled in June 1855 that work on the immigrant-processing depot could proceed.^[48][72]

The Emigrant Landing Depot opened within the fort on August 1, 1855,^[73] and the depot began processing immigrants two days later.^[74][75] The identity of the first migrant processed at the fort is unknown. Of the first five ships to arrive at Castle Garden, English laborer Richard Richards was the first person on the manifest of the largest ship.^[49] Although the New York state government endorsed Castle Garden’s conversion to an immigrant-processing depot, the New York City government opposed the move and accused the Emigration Commissioners of violating the terms of their lease.^[76][77]Many complaints about Castle Garden came from “runners” representing booking agents and boarding house operators, who could not intercept unwitting immigrants because of Castle Garden’s strict policies.^[78] The New York state government’s initial four-year lease of Castle Garden expired in 1859, and state officials renewed their lease annually for the next ten years. By then, state and city officials could not agree on who owned the depot.^[79] The city, state, and federal governments continued to fight over the depot’s ownership through the 1870s.^[80]

Although Castle Garden staff often mistreated immigrants, historian George J. Svejda wrote that the depot “was still the best place for immigrants upon their landing on America’s shores”.^[59] In 1864, to convince immigrants to enlist in the United States Armed Forces during the American Civil War, the County Bounty Committee erected a recruitment center next to Castle Garden.^[81][82] Two years later, the Board of Emigration Commissioners constructed a one-story labor exchange building, a waiting room, and an information office, and they made repairs to Castle Garden.^[83] The fort’s exterior remained largely unchanged over the years, but the interior and many of the fort’s wooden outbuildings were frequently renovated.^[51] Battery Park was expanded circa 1869 using landfill,^[84] at which point the island containing Castle Garden was incorporated into the rest of Manhattan Island.^[12][27] The rotunda was extensively restored at this time, and a wooden balcony was installed.^[55] By then, The New York Times wrote that the surrounding Battery Park was “a haven for the ‘runners’ who approached innocent Irish and German newcomers, offering them nonexistent lodgings for their money”.^[85]

By the early 1870s, Castle Garden’s information bureau employed staff members who could speak over a dozen languages.^[86] The New York state government encouraged immigrants to use other ports of entry to reduce overcrowding, so it issued a head tax on every immigrant who passed through Castle Garden.^[87] This measure was largely ineffective, as The New York Times wrote in 1874: “Castle Garden is so well known in Europe that few emigrants can be induced to sail to any other destination.”^[87][88] By then, the immigration depot was in poor condition, with rotting floors and “tottering” offices and benches.^[89] The Board of Emigration Commissioners lost a significant source of income in 1875, when the Supreme Court of the United States invalidated a New York state law that required steamship companies to pay a head tax or put up a bond for each immigrant. Afterward, the commissioners sought funding from the state legislature.^[90][91] Due to budgetary shortfalls, the Emigration Commissioners disbanded the labor bureau in 1875,^[92][93] although the German and Irish Emigrant Societies took over the labor bureau’s operation.^[92] Congress passed the Page Act of 1875, the first restrictive federal immigration law in the United States, during this time.^[49][94]

The structure was severely damaged in a fire on July 30, 1876.^[95][96][97] Castle Garden’s exterior remained intact, as did the outbuildings to the north of the fort, but the interior was completely destroyed.^[47][97] In the aftermath of the fire, several city officials proposed shuttering the Castle Garden immigration center and restoring the fort as a venue for “public enjoyment”.^[98] Nonetheless, the New York state government awarded a contract for Castle Garden’s reconstruction in September 1876,^[99][100] and it reopened on November 27, 1876.^[99][101] As part of the $30,000 project (equivalent to $885,844 in 2024),^[40] officials installed windows in the embrasures along the facade, and they added two doorways.^[47][101] After the nearby Barge Office was completed in 1879, immigrants disembarked at the Barge Office, where officers examined immigrants’ baggage. The baggage-collection duties soon returned to Castle Garden, and the Barge Office became a storage area.^[92]

New York state officials unsuccessfully attempted to reinstate a head tax at Castle Garden in 1881.^[102] The following year, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1882, which imposed a head tax on non-U.S. citizens who passed through American ports, as well as restricted certain classes of people from immigrating to America.^[49][103] Under the 1882 act, the Emigration Commissioners earned 50 cents for each immigrant who passed through Castle Garden.^[103] Later that year, the Emigration Commissioners began collecting rent from the various companies and agents with offices at Castle Garden, and it started collecting taxes from boardinghouse operators.^[104] The Immigration Act of 1882 also prompted a jurisdictional dispute between the city, state, and federal governments.^[105] For example, in 1885, the state government refused to allocate $10,000 for repairs to the depot’s ferry dock because the city technically owned Castle Garden.^[105]The state government finally provided money for repairs in 1887.

By the late 1880s, Castle Garden had become overcrowded and unhygienic, and there were numerous reports that Castle Garden officials were mistreating immigrants.^[108] Robert Chesebrough, a businessman who owned several structures around Battery Park, had also advocated for the closure of the Castle Garden processing depot.^[109] The Chicago Daily Tribune wrote that the structure was “a dilapidated rotunda surrounded by equally ramshackle structures for the housing of the strangers on these shores”.^[64] The Emigration Commissioners had dismissed many of Castle Garden’s employees in September 1889 because of declining income, further compounding the facility’s issues.^[110][111] Federal and state officials also had difficulty sharing jurisdiction of Castle Garden; state officials reportedly did not enforce federal laws, as it was not part of their duties.^[110]

The federal government notified New York state officials in February 1890 that it would take over immigrant-processing duties at Castle Garden within sixty days.^[112][113] Federal officials planned to construct a new immigrant-processing center at another location, ultimately selecting a site on Ellis Island.^[114] Castle Garden closed on April 18, 1890,^{[114][115][116]} The immigrant-processing center was temporarily relocated to the Barge Office.^{[117][118][119]} The state’s Commissioners of Emigration had forbidden the federal government to continue to use Castle Garden until the Ellis Island immigrant depot was completed.^[119] The new registration office on Ellis Island was completed in 1892.^[34] In its last year of operation, Castle Garden processed 450,394 travelers, 364,086 of whom were immigrants.^[49] When the immigrant-registration depot closed, city officials contemplated converting Castle Garden into an “amusement resort”.^[70]

The New York state government formally transferred Castle Garden to the city government on December 31, 1890.^[120]By the next year, city officials had removed the wooden fence around Castle Garden, and they were planning to demolish the various outbuildings around the fort.^[121] The New York Naval Reserve’s First Battalion considered relocating to Castle Garden at that time, and it subsequently used Castle Garden as a drill hall during the early 1890s.