Here it is New York Harbor and the Isle of Manhattan at Battery Park! For those old enough to remember Naked City, an early TV show about NYC, its opening line was: "There are over eight million stories in the Naked City. This is one of them." Yes, over
eight million people (actually 8.3 million according to the latest US Census) live on a tiny island about 12 miles long and three miles wide
and, as the Stephen Sondheim song (from the musical Company) goes: “Another Hundred People Just Got Off of the
Train.” No wonder many Americans say New Yorkers are crazy.
New York Bay is an estuary (an inlet where a river’s
current – in this case two rivers, the Hudson and the
East Rivers, meet an ocean, the Atlantic).The port of New York Harbor
is one of the largest and most natural in the world (with little ice and fog) and it played a large role in turning New
York City into the metropolis it is today.The construction of the Erie Canal, which
opened on October 26, 1825,
had a great impact on the growth and prosperity of the City and made New York one of the most
important ports in the country. (DeWitt Clinton, both a former NYC Mayor and New York State Governor, was a major advocate for the construction of the Erie Canal and those opposing its construction referred to the canal as "Clinton's ditch.")
Battery Park was a favorite spot
of the poet Walt Whitman, and
novelist Herman Melville, who worked
as a US
customs inspector. Melville mentions the Battery in the first chapter of MOBY DICK in his description of Manhattan:
"There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs -- commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme down-town is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which few hour previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of watergazers there."
Robert Fulton lived nearby at One State Street.Fulton would construct the first steamboat at a Manhattan
shipyard, and the North River Steamboat would begin service on the Hudson River
on August 17, 1804 as “the first
steamboat in America.”
Also at Battery Park is Castle Clinton where ferries run to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Castle
Clinton is one of 12 forts built to defend New York Harbor during the War of 1812; after
World War I it became a memorial to World War I veterans.Castle Clinton was named to honor DeWitt Clinton and has been an
entertainment center, opera house, an immigrant depot and a popular
aquarium.Not all immigrants entered America through Ellis Island;
Castle Clinton was an immigrant depot
where over eight million people would enter the country from August 1855 to
1890.It was restored as a national
monument in the 1960’s.The statues on the right are a memorial to
the nation’s Coast Guard.The Staten Island Ferry Terminal is also at
Battery Park and there is a Skyscraper
Museum, “devoted to the study of high-rise building, past, present, and
future,” at 39 Battery Park.The
Seamen’s Church Institute of New York and New Jersey, which advocates for
the well being of merchant mariners, is on Water Street.Due to its historical significance, the
Battery Park neighborhood has been called “the
birthplace of New York City” and due to the
number of immigrants that passed through here, more accurately, “the birthplace of America.”
The City
of New York has proposed that New York Harbor become a new tourist site, a
Harbor District, which would include nine sites among them Ellis Island, Governors Island, Battery Park City, the Statue of
Liberty and parts of Brooklyn.Of course, the harbor is already a tourist
site and one of the most visited places in New York City.Most visitors come here to board ferries to
the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.The cluster of
green trees at the left is part of Battery Park.On the right are the Staten Island Ferry
Terminal and the Battery
Maritime Building.In the 1800s the Battery
was also a place to go walking on a Sunday afternoon. A design for a new 40-acre park on Governors Island was announced in December 2007. The park is to have a two-mile tree-lined promenade and a lush saltwater marsh.
