The Battery

Overview

The Battery (formerly Battery Park) is a 25-acre park at Manhattan's southern tip facing New York Harbor, with Castle Clinton, more than 20 monuments, gardens, and the SeaGlass Carousel. The surrounding South Ferry area has ferry terminals, including the Staten Island Ferry. The Battery Conservancy, founded in 1994, restored the park.

Highlights

• Castle Clinton: a fort built just before the War of 1812, later Castle Garden, the country's first immigration depot (1855-1890) for an estimated 7.7 million people; now a National Park Service site with ticket booths for Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island ferries
• Battery Bosque and gardens: a 4-acre garden by Piet Oudolf around a grove of 140 plane trees, plus the Jerusalem Grove
• SeaGlass Carousel: a bioluminescent carousel nodding to Castle Clinton's aquarium days
• Monuments: the East Coast Memorial (4,609 names), the American Merchant Mariners' Memorial, the Immigrants statue, Verrazzano, John Ericsson, and Hope Garden for AIDS victims
• Pier A: a former fireboat station, now a restaurant

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "The Battery (Manhattan)", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0