Photo by Peter Aaron/Esto
Castle
Williams was built in the early 1800s to defend New York against the
possibility that the British would try to regain the American
colonies they had lost only a decade earlier. Originally bristling with
three tiers of cannon, it rises at the waterfront facing the Statue of
Liberty, one of the two forts - the other is Fort Jay - that
comprise the Governors Island National Monument, the 22-acre section of
the Island under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service.
Its name comes from its designer, Colonel John Williams, Chief
Engineer in the Army Corps of Engineers and first Superintendent of the
Military Academy at West Point - also a nephew of Benjamin
Franklin. Castle Williams, completed in 1811, and its twin, Castle
Clinton on the Battery in Manhattan, were part of the newly independent
country's defensive construction known as the "second system." Fort
Jay, completed in 1808, was part of the "firs system." While none of
these fortifications saw battle in the War of 1812, the very lack of
action was an achievement as they had been constructed as much to deter
attack as to fight off an enemy invasion. Castle Williams, with its
high profile, was the prototype for a harbor oriented defense that
offered concentrated firepower. Some scholars consider it to be the
finest and most important example of its type in U.S. coastal
fortifications.
During the Civil War it functioned as
a supposedly escape-proof military prison, but Captain William Robert
Webb of the 2nd North Carolina Cavalry proved famously that it wasn't.
A few days before the end of the war he went over the wall and swam to
Manhattan. When he explained to people why he was wandering around in
dressed in rebel greys he told the truth and - disbelieving or
uninterested - they let him wander. Years later he was elected to the
Senate.
Grover Cleveland Bergdoll, the most notorious draft dodger of the
first World War was sentenced in January 1920 to five years of
hard labor in Castle Williams, but five months later, under guard on a
trip to his home in Pennsylvania, he slipped away and fled to
Germany. Returning to America in 1939, as Congress was about to exile
him forever, he was again incarcerated on the Island.
Castle Williams was also the base for a failed demonstration of
the telegraph by its inventor, Samuel F. B. Morse. He laid a wire
across the harbor to Castle Clinton, aiming to show how his miraculous
device could speed messages between remote places, but a ship dragging
its anchor broke the wire and the demonstration didn't happen.
When the Island was transferred to the Coast Guard in 1966, the
Castle was converted to a community center. The halls that once held
prisoners became a nursery for the children of Coast Guard families
posted on the Island. A legacy of asbestos insulation, lead paint and
general deterioration make its winding stone staircase and narrow jail cells off-limits for now. Representative Jerrold
Nadler is leading the effort to allocate $5 million for this work in
the NPS Construction Budget for fiscal 2008. For now, only the large
interior court is open to the public.
In its new life as a National Monument, Castle Williams's layered
history faces yet another transformation. The Park
Service's preliminary draft of the General Management Plan for the
Monument sees it as the Island's exhibition and history center, focused
on harbor themes - its defense, history and ecology. A unique
year-round observation deck would offer spectacular views of the whole
harbor from the top of its solid 8-foot-thick masonry walls.
After completing the draft and final General Management Plan, scheduled
for later this year, the Park Service may seek to carry out their plan
with a private non-profit organization. One such group - the New Globe
Theatre - wants to fit a replica of Shakespeare's circular Globe
Theater into the circular courtyard. The Management Plan will provide
the criteria for determining whether such a use is compatible.
http://www.governorsislandalliance.org/pdf/OnlineOffshorevol2_2.pdf