The Battery's Castle Clinton, a fort built in 1808, processed more than eight million immigrants between 1855 and 1890 as the nation's first official immigration station.
The park's 25 acres sit almost entirely on 19th-century landfill, and the harbor-facing promenade tends to be windier and more exposed than the planted interior.
Almost none of this park is New York. The original shoreline ran roughly along State Street, which is now the park's inland edge; about three acres were added in 1824, and from 1855 the city kept extending the ground seaward with spoil from street-widening projects. Walking west from State Street toward the water is walking off the island onto nineteenth-century fill, which is why the harbor edge feels so exposed — there is nothing between it and the Narrows.
Castle Clinton, the squat circular fort at the center, was built between 1808 and 1811 on a small artificial island off the shore and reached by causeway; the landfill later closed the gap. It mounted twenty-eight guns for the War of 1812 and never fired on an enemy. Congress ceded it to the city in 1822, and as Castle Garden it became an opera house and exhibition hall where Jenny Lind and Lola Montez performed.
From 1855 to 1890 it was an immigration depot run by the state of New York, ahead of federal control and Ellis Island; the National Park Service puts the number who passed through at more than eight million, two of every three immigrants arriving in that period. It then housed the New York Aquarium from 1896 until 1941, was made a national monument in 1946 after a fight over whether to demolish it during the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel works, and was restored in 1975.
The planted interior is recent and deliberate. The Battery Conservancy, founded in 1994 by Warrie Price, brought in the Dutch designer Piet Oudolf, whose Battery Bosque opened in 2005 and whose later perennial beds are built around plants that hold their structure after flowering. They are worth reading in late autumn and winter, when the seedheads and dry grasses stand up against the harbor light and most other city planting has been cut to the ground. The SeaGlass Carousel, by WXY with George Tsypin, opened in August 2015. Facing the water, the East Coast Memorial, dedicated in 1963, carries 4,609 names on eight granite pylons.
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The Battery, formerly known as Battery Park, is a 25-acre (10 ha) public park located at the southern tip of Manhattan Island in New York City facing New York Harbor. The park is bounded by Battery Place on the north, with Bowling Green to the northeast, State Street on the east, New York Harbor to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. The park contains attractions such as an early 19th-century fort named Castle Clinton; multiple monuments; and the SeaGlass Carousel. The surrounding area, known as South Ferry, contains multiple ferry terminals, including the Staten Island Ferry's Whitehall Terminal; a boat launch to the Statue of Liberty National Monument ; and a boat launch to Governors Island.
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