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Stay safe in the heat: Drink plenty of water, spend time in the shade, and visit the first aid station at Soissons Landing if you feel unwell. Click here for important warm weather visitor information.

Stay safe in the heat: Drink plenty of water, spend time in the shade, and visit the first aid station at Soissons Landing if you feel unwell. Click here for important warm weather visitor information.

1918 on Gov­er­nors Island

Gov­er­nors Island’s long his­to­ry as a mil­i­tary base stretch­es over two cen­turies, from the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War era until 1996. In 1913, on the eve of World War 1 begin­ning in Europe, U.S. Sec­re­tary of War Hen­ry Stim­son called the Island the most valu­able mil­i­tary prop­er­ty in the Unit­ed States.” Troops depart­ed from Gov­er­nors Island in 1917 to seize Ger­man-owned ships and facil­i­ties in New York Har­bor as the first act of the Unit­ed States in the war. In 1918, at the height of the U.S.’s involve­ment in the con­flict, Gov­er­nors Island served as a train­ing ground, embarka­tion point, and major stor­age and ship­ping cen­ter that han­dled mil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of essen­tial sup­plies and equip­ment, mak­ing it a major asset for the U.S. Army. 

Pre­fab­ri­cat­ed bar­racks on the South Island, Novem­ber 141918.

An island expan­sion project under­tak­en by the Army cre­at­ed the south­ern half of Gov­er­nors Island between 1900 and 1913. Large­ly vacant until the begin­ning of the war, the new land­scape saw its first occu­pants in the form of pre­fab­ri­cat­ed wood­en bar­racks and ware­hous­es that sprung up on the flat, emp­ty ter­rain. A 1918 aer­i­al pho­to of the Island (top, cour­tesy Ann But­ten­wieser) shows a tight­ly packed for­ma­tion of build­ings on the South Island as well as a small rail­road sys­tem. The bar­racks housed sol­diers being trained on the Island, wait­ing to ship out to Europe or oth­er train­ing camps, or, like the 1,000 sol­diers of the 22nd Infantry Reg­i­ment, guard­ing the Har­bor, the Island and the $75 mil­lion of sup­plies and equip­ment stored there. 

Men from a Labor Bat­tal­ion lined up out­side a seg­re­gat­ed mess hall on GI, ca. 1918.

The work of han­dling sup­plies, haul­ing freight, and main­tain­ing equip­ment and the Island itself was large­ly han­dled by the enlist­ed Black ser­vice­men of the Labor Bat­tal­ions. As all reg­i­ments and their hous­ing facil­i­ties were seg­re­gat­ed at the time, Black sol­diers fre­quent­ly lived in poor­er con­di­tions, many sleep­ing in tents on the Island rather than in the bar­racks. Dur­ing WWI, over 80% of Black ser­vice­men were assigned to Labor Bat­tal­ions, whose hard work trans­formed the Island into its war-ready state. On Gov­er­nors Island, a crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant base for the U.S. Army in 1918, the duties per­formed by the Labor Bat­tal­ions were absolute­ly cru­cial to the war effort. 

A loco­mo­tive from the Gov­er­nors Island rail­road. Note G.I.R.R.’ sten­ciled on the engine.

To sup­port the logis­ti­cal needs of mov­ing goods onto, off and around the Island, the Army con­struct­ed the Gov­er­nors Island Rail­road. In 1918, the GIRR com­prised rough­ly eight miles of track and fea­tured six engines to move goods from piers to ware­hous­es and back. While an invalu­able part of the Island’s infra­struc­ture, the rail line was referred to at var­i­ous times as the world’s short­est rail­road.” The tiny but indis­pens­able rail sys­tem helped to ship over $1 mil­lion of sup­plies and equip­ment from the Island each day at the height of the conflict. 

A Jan­u­ary 1919 plan show­ing the con­fig­u­ra­tion of build­ings on GI dur­ing the war.

The war stretched the Island’s infra­struc­ture to its lim­its in 1918, which saw over 3,000 peo­ple work­ing on the Island on aver­age every day. Cas­tle Williams, hav­ing served as a prison for decades, endured its most packed quar­ters yet as near­ly 900 inmates, many of them draft dodgers, squeezed into the fort. Crowd­ed con­di­tions con­tributed to an influen­za epi­dem­ic that swept across Gov­er­nors Island that year, with 516 cas­es cram­ming the Island’s Post Hos­pi­tal and requir­ing tem­po­rary wards to be set up in tents. With the Island buzzing with wartime activ­i­ties, the annu­al spring­time Gar­den Par­ty had to be can­celed. Not all aspects of life on Gov­er­nors Island were dif­fi­cult; music played a large part in keep­ing morale up. The Army Music School, head­quar­tered on GI, saw its high­est enroll­ment with over 45 recruits in 1918, and the famed 16 th Infantry Band reg­u­lar­ly com­pet­ed with Cas­tle Williams’ prison band to play Sat­ur­day night gigs at the Offi­cers’ Club in South Battery. 

The pre­fab­ri­cat­ed build­ings on the South Island were demol­ished after WWI, as seen in this pho­to ca. 1930.

In 1918, Gov­er­nors Island hummed with the war effort — sol­diers train­ing and ship­ping out, freight ship­ments com­ing and going, loco­mo­tives chug­ging along the shore. Few reminders of that era remain 100 years lat­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the South Island, where the tem­po­rary struc­tures were soon demol­ished and replaced. That ter­rain, once lined with bar­racks and ware­hous­es, now boasts four earth­work Hills from which vis­i­tors can take in a land­scape lay­ered with his­to­ry, some more vis­i­ble than the rest.