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ISLAND ARCHIVES: A Look at Gov­er­nors Island’s Pic­turesque Past

Aug 19, 2010 4:26 pm
Gov­er­nors Island: Shape shifter
Map of New York Har­bor cir­ca 1835. The famil­iar ice cream cone shape of the island has yet to emerge.
The cur­rent and future island have much to offer; 2.2 mile prom­e­nade with har­bor views, a green for pic­nick­ing, loung­ing and swing­ing while gaz­ing at the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, and a dynam­ic and excit­ing future park and open space. How­ev­er, only one hun­dred years ago these places were part of the har­bor. The orig­i­nal island com­prised only what is now the his­toric dis­trict, north of the Colonels Row green. The island mea­sured 69.4 acres, half of its cur­rent size. At the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry, mil­i­tary com­man­ders were deter­mined to expand Gov­er­nors Island to accom­mo­date a full reg­i­ment. Devel­op­ments in Man­hat­tan pro­vid­ed a way for this to occur. In the 1880s, New York City’s pop­u­la­tion boomed, cre­at­ing the need for improved trans­porta­tion sys­tems. The mil­i­tary made arrange­ments with the City of New York to dump the fill cre­at­ed by the con­struc­tion of the 4th Avenue sub­way, New York City’s first, at Gov­er­nors Island. Between 1900, when con­struc­tion of the sub­way began, and the project’s com­ple­tion in 1912, the city deposit­ed about 4,787,000 cubic yards of fill on the south side of the island, cre­at­ing 103 acres of new land. [cap­tion id=“attachment_3711” align=“aligncenter” width=“300” caption=“The expand­ed island, about 100 years lat­er.”][/​caption] The ini­tial expan­sion was cre­at­ed by the con­struc­tion of a rip-rap bulk­head on each side of the pro­posed Island exten­sion. The rip rap wall was an exper­i­men­tal engi­neer­ing tech­nique, but it was suc­cess­ful and the bulk­head enclo­sure was filled with the sub­way exca­va­tions and topped with a com­bi­na­tion of clay and sand. [cap­tion id=”” align=“aligncenter” width=“300” caption=“Plan show­ing shape of Island in 1879 super­im­posed upon Coast Guard era island bound­aries and lay­out.”][/​caption] The increase in the Island’s size took place in the midst of a con­tentious bat­tle between the City of New York and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment for the use of the Island. While plans to expand the mil­i­tary estab­lish­ment on island pro­ceed­ed, city offi­cials dreamed of using the island in a host of dif­fer­ent ways from an air strip to an immi­grant pro­cess­ing cen­ter (a role even­tu­al­ly assigned to Ellis Island) and a city park. How­ev­er, the mil­i­tary per­se­vered and the new expanse of island was used for mil­i­tary stag­ing and to house regiments.
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