|
Ellis Island National Monument |
|
Ellis Island was incorporated as part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument on May 11, 1965. Between 1892 and 1954, approximately 12 million steerage and third class steamship passengers who entered the United States through the port of New York were legally and medically inspected at Ellis Island. Reopened on September 10, 1990 after a massive restoration, the Main Building on Ellis Island is now a museum dedicated to the history of immigration and the important role this island claimed during the mass migration of humanity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. |
|
|
|
Governors Island National Monument |
|
Governors Island is a 172-acre island located a half-mile from the southern tip of Manhattan in New York harbor. Its name comes from the time when New York was a British colony and the colonial assembly reserved the island for the exclusive use of New York’s royal governors. When the American Revolution began in 1776, George Washington ordered the island to be fortified with earthworks just prior to the Battle of Long Island (also known as the Battle of Brooklyn) - the first ever engagement of the fledgling Continental Army with British forces. Two fortifications were placed on Governors Island in the years preceding the War of 1812 as part of an extensive coastal defense system. During the Civil War, Castle Williams held Confederate prisoners of war. After the war, it was used as a military stockade and became the east coast counterpart to military prisons at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. In 1878 the military installation on the island, then known as Fort Columbus, became a major Army administrative center and, in 1939, the headquarters of the United States First Army. When the Army left Governors Island in 1966, the installation became a U.S. Coast Guard base - the largest in the world. Its closing in 1997 concluded almost two centuries of the island’s use as a federal reservation. In 2001, the two historic fortifications and their surroundings became a national monument. |
|
|
|
Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site |
|
On September 14th, 1901, an anxious Theodore Roosevelt stood in the library of a friend's home in Buffalo, NY. Hours earlier, President William McKinley had died of an assassin's bullet, and now Roosevelt stood ready to rise to the highest office in the land. Roosevelt had been in the vice-presidency for barely six months and had privately feared that his political career was ended with his election to a largely powerless office. Yet at 3:32 pm of September 14th, Theodore Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 26th President of the United States as a consequence of unforeseen tragedy. Roosevelt's administration would expand the role of the United States in world affairs, change the relationship between the American government and its citizens, and alter the shape of the presidency itself. The Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural NHS preserves the former Ansley Wilcox home, the scene of this fateful turning point in American history. |
|
|
|