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Battery Park (to New Yorkers, The Battery) is a 21-acre (8.5 ha) public park located at the southern tip of Manhattan in New York City. The park is named for the artillery that was stationed there at various times by the Dutch and British. At one end of the park is Pier A 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.
To the northwest of the park lies Battery Park City, an area of landfill redevelopment built in the 1970s and 80s, which includes Robert F. Wagner Park and the Battery Park City Promenade. Together with Hudson River Park a system of greenspaces, bikeways and prominades now extend up the Hudson shoreline. A bikeway is being built through the park that will connect to the Hudson River Park bikeway, north of the park across Battery Place that runs past Battery Park City and the World Fincial Center and up the West Side. Across State Street to the northeast lies the U.S. Customs House/Museum of the American Indian. Peter Minuit Plaza abuts the southeast end of the park, directly in front of the South Ferry Terminal of the Staten Island Ferry.
History
The park itself was created by landfill during the 19th century, creating a treed open space at the foot of the heavily built-up mainland of Manhattan Island. Skyscrapers now occupy the original land, stopping abruptly where the park begins. On State Street, the former harbor front and the northern boundary of the park, a single Federal mansion survives (illustration, left). Until the 1820s, the city's stylish residential district lay north of this house, between Broadway and the "North" River.
Within the park lies Castle Clinton, an American fort built on a small off-shore island immediately prior to the War of 1812 and named for mayor DeWitt Clinton. When the land of Battery Park was created, the island was enclosed by land.
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 bacame 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. As the migration of the city's elite uptown increased concurrently with the mass European migration of the middle 19th century resulting in immigrants settling the area, the location was less favorable to its patrons and was closed. Castle Garden was then made into the world's first immigration depot, processing millions of immigrants beginnng in 1855 - over 40 years before its successor, Ellis Island, opened its doors. This period co-incided with immigration waves resulting from the Great Hunger in Ireland (a.k.a."The Famine") and other pivitol European events. It is currently a National Monument known again by its original name, and managed by the National Park Service. In addition to a small historical exhibit, the fort is the site where ferry tickets are sold to visit Liberty and Ellis islands.
Battery Park is featured in the famous song by Leonard Bernstein, "New York, New York, it's a Hell of a Town", which includes the line "and the battery's down" for the southerly location of the Park.
Five months after being damaged but not destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks, Fritz Koenig's The Sphere, which once stood outside the World Trade Center a few blocks away, was reinstalled in a temporary location along Eisenhower Mall in the northern section of the park. There, along with an eternal flame, it serves to memorialize the victims of 9/11.
The Discovered Wall
On December 8, 2005, New York City authorities announced that builders working on a new subway station in Battery Park have found the remains of a 200-year-old stone wall. *
"This wall most likely is a portion of the gun batteries that once protected the city in the late 17th and 18th centuries and gave rise to the modern park name," said Robert Tierney, chairman of the Landmarks Preservation Commission. The city and the New York City Transit Authority plan to work together to preserve the remains, which were described as "an important remnant of the history of New York City."
Battery Park in Fiction
- Battery Park figures prominently as a recurring location in the computer game Deus Ex.
- Battery Park appears in a scene at the end of the Jackie Chan film The Protector.
- In the film Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), Battery Park is the location of a key scene.
External links
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"Battery Park (New York)"