Governors Island Alliance

"To use Governors Island as a park is a simple absurdity," said the lieutenant governor of New York in 1901. That's just one delicious anecdote from Ann Buttenwieser's new history: Governors Island: The Jewel of New York Harbor.

Lt. Gov. Timothy Woodruff went on to say, "The island is an absolute necessity for military uses." Proposed bills in Congress would have made it a park as early as the 1880's, but the military prevailed. And when the Army felt that the original island wasn't big enough for its mission they added another 103.5 acres - the southern, non-historic "half." The mission, of course, was the defense of New York harbor, but the expansion made the Island a navigational hazard in the very waters it was supposed to protect. So they added a foghorn.

Ann Buttenwieser will read from her forthcoming history of the Island on Saturday, August 8, in the Admiral's House at 12:30. Buttenwieser, well known for her efforts to enliven the harbor, was recently named to GIPEC's board of directors. Her book, Governors Island: The Jewel of New York Harbor, is due in the fall.

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NOTE: Saturday, August 8, is also the first day of the National Monument's Civil War Weekend.

Picture a much smaller island, one-half its current size. A forest of oak and pine on the rise where Fort Jay sits. Tulip trees over by Buttermilk Channel. Probably some white pine, away from the salt spray. Hawks, bobwhites. Sandy beaches! No Lenape?

That's Governors Island before Henry Hudson sailed by in 1609. Research by the Wildlife Conservation Society yielded the fascinating Mannahatta / Manhattan exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, establishing that all of the above was probably true. Ecologist Eric Sanderson, associate director of the society's Living Landscapes Program, headed the team that put it together and comes to the Island to talk about it for the National Park Service on Saturday, September 19. The museum exhibit runs through October 12.

Linda Neal, one of the Island's original settlers, has left her post as Superintendent of the Governors Island National Monument for a new assignment in Washington, replaced by Patti Reilly, who has been acting superintendent for Jamaica Bay in the Gateway National Recreation Area.

Linda Neal first came to the Island in 1996, to check it out as a site that warranted preservation by the National Park Service. She recommended it, and you know the rest. When President Clinton created the National Monument, she became its first superintendent - with no staff.

If you've been to Governors Island in the past half century, odds are you got there on the ferry named for Medal of Honor winner Samuel S. Coursen. So did Queen Elizabeth II, Mikhail Gorbachev, Francois Mitterand and a procession of U.S. presidents. It's usually the only way.

The Army acquired the Coursen, brand new, in 1956 when the Island was First Army headquarters. The Coast Guard inherited her when they acquired the island in 1966. In Coast Guard days she was one of four ferries on the roughly 7-minute crossing. She has been GIPEC's flagship since 2003, capacity 1,000 passengers. One can only guess how many times she has made the crossing.

National Park Service Ranger Ashtin Josey, a sophomore at Kean University in New Jersey, talks with visitors inside Fort Jay. Ashtin was an intern this year as part of the augmented summertime staff for programs in the Governors Island National Monument.


NPS Ranger and Interpreter Charlie Kahlstrom demonstrating a Model 1841 Springfield Rifle, known as the "Mississippi" after its use by Jefferson Davis's Mississippi volunteers in the Mexican-American War. A muzzle-loader, it took a .54 caliber ball.

Henry Hudson set out from Holland 400 years ago to find an easterly passage to Asia. Instead he found America - and New York. Governors Island is one of the possible legacy sites for the quadricentennial celebration in 2009.
    Hudson explored today's Hudson River up as far as Albany before realizing that it was not a shortcut to the Pacific. He did, however, establish the Dutch presence in the New World, trading furs, beads and wampum with the natives. Fifteen years later, in 1624, the Dutch West India Company established a settlement on Governors Island, before moving to the larger Island of Manhattan.
    Next year is also an anniversary for "Fulton's Folly" - Robert Fulton's wrongly scorned steamboat. He built his first commercial boat - the North River Steamboat, later known as the Clermont - in a Manhattan shipyard, launched it on the Hudson in 2007, and two years later, in 1809, presented the city with an improved version, the Car of Neptune, that was put into service as a ferry between the city and Albany. Fulton is buried in the Trinity Church graveyard.
    While neither Hudson 400 years ago, nor Fulton 200 years ago, landed on Governors Island, Wilbur Wright did 100 years ago, during the Hudson-Fulton celebrations in 1909. With a canoe strapped to his plane as a pontoon, Wright flew from the Island across the harbor around the Statue of Liberty and back again. It was the world's first flight over water. Months later he returned to claim a $10,000 prize by flying five miles up the west side of Manhattan to Grant's Tomb.

Governors Island has a rich and interesting history. View a timeline of Governors Island's history on GIPEC's website here.

The monument with the big propeller on the south side of Liggett Hall (Building 400) honors the pioneers who soloed in the earliest years of aviation - the Early Birds - not least but not specifically the Wright brothers and Glenn Curtiss - and the less known Ruth Law, who flew from Chicago to the Island in 1915 and was first to do a loop-the-loop. The monument, dedicated in 1954, is a bronze cast of the propeller from Wilbur Wright's first military flight in 1909, mounted on a large marble base.

Status as an Early Bird required documentary evidence of solo flight in heavier-than-air or lighter-than-air craft before December 17, 1916, the thirteenth anniversary of the Wrights' first sustained flight at Kitty Hawk. Many of the 600-odd men and women who qualified in those pre-World War years built their own planes and taught themselves to fly, as did the Wrights and Curtiss. Notwithstanding the Wrights' hold on first place, Curtiss held America's first pilot's license. The Wrights were Nos. 2 and 3.

Governors Island, headquarters of the First Army at the time, became a base for early aviation because it was open and flat, and its approaches were free of obstructions. Wilbur Wright was the first to use it, for a flight around the Statue of Liberty in September 1909 - a historic first flight over water - and a month later a flight to Grant's Tomb in upper Manhattan and back. In the years that followed there were flights between the Island and Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and St. Louis as well as Curtiss's own history-making flight from Albany. The field was also the first training ground for the U.S. military's air squadrons.

Governors Island is New York's birthplace: the first European settlement when the Dutch established New Amsterdam in 1624. In 1776, Patriot cannons on the island helped General Washington preserve his battered army. After the revolution, the island was given at no cost to the Federal Government to provide for the defense of our fledgling nation. Star-shaped Fort Jay was completed by 1807 and Castle Williams, a massive, three-tiered masonry fort completed in 1811. These two forts helped New York escape the fiery fate of Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812. During its 200-year history as an important military base, Ulysses Grant, Confederate prisoners, Wilbur Wright, World War I doughboys, Samuel Morse, Soviet President Gorbachev and even Rocky Graziano all had their moment on the island. Generations of Army and Coast Guard kids were born and raised on the island: a self-contained small town thriving in the shadow of skyscrapers. This history is palpable when one walks in the 93-acre National Landmark and City Historic District. Lined with hundred-year-old shade trees and surrounded by spectacular views of Lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty, the historic district features 19th century Federal and Victorian-style buildings and green, manicured grounds.

In January 2003, the Federal Government announced the transfer of the 172-acre island to the City and State of New York and the National Park Service, concluding two centuries of restricted military use on the island. Twenty-two acres, including the two forts, constitute New York's newest National Park, Governors Island National Monument. The other 150 acres are owned by the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation (GIPEC). Working with GIPEC, the Park Service and our elected officials, the Alliance seeks to ensure that parks and open spaces and historic preservation are primary goals in the final plans and proposals - and that there is funding to make these plans happen. Download an aerial view of Governors Island (PDF 1 MB)

Record numbers of visitors are coming out to the Island this summer, as many as 5,000 on an average weekend. The largest one-day crowd so far - more than 3,500 -- turned out for the Richie Havens concert on July 21. http://www.governorsislandalliance.com/pdf/OnlineOffshorevol2_6.pdf