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Please be advised: Slide Hill is temporarily closed for planned maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Please be advised: Slide Hill is temporarily closed for planned maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience.

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ISLAND ARCHIVES: A bi-week­ly look at Gov­er­nors Island’s pic­turesque past

Mar 25, 2010 1:28 pm
Arrival on Gov­er­nors Island in 1896 looked like this.
From 1832 – 1920, the New York Arse­nal was locat­ed on Gov­er­nors Island. Both active arma­ments and obso­lete weapon­ry was stored on the north end of the Island over the course of those years. The New York Arse­nal did not man­u­fac­ture arms, but its staff inspect­ed, pur­chased and took deliv­ery of arms and artillery from pri­vate con­trac­tors. The arse­nal also func­tioned as a ware­house and as a dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ter of arms to Army posts across the coun­try. The arse­nal was estab­lished on 6.5 acres in and around the area now occu­pied by Per­sh­ing Hall. The loca­tion was behind and down­hill from Fort Jay, allow­ing a clear field of fire towards the har­bor from the fort’s can­nons. After the Civ­il War, the fields of fire were no longer required, and the arse­nal expand­ed along the Island’s north shore toward Cas­tle Williams. The arse­nal build­ings are some of the old­est on the Island and include Build­ing 104, con­struct­ed in 1843 as an ord­nance store­house (pic­tured above at the top cen­ter.) This build­ing lat­er housed a muse­um of mil­i­tary arti­facts, whose con­tents were lat­er tak­en over by the Smith­son­ian. Arrival on the Island near Pier 101 meant a walk past dozens of canon and expan­sive piles of canon balls and oth­er muni­tions. With the intro­duc­tion of fer­ries from Brook­lyn in 2008, vis­i­tors to the Island now expe­ri­ence a sim­i­lar Island approach but are met with a far more recre­ation­al prospect! [cap­tion id=“attachment_2963” align=“aligncenter” width=“400” caption=“Arrival to the Island from Brook­lyn in 2010”][/​caption] Thanks to our neigh­bors at the Nation­al Park Ser­vice for shar­ing a won­der­ful col­lec­tion of his­toric Gov­er­nors Island Images.
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