THE NEW YORK AQUARIUM. 405 



THE NEW YOEK AQUAKIUM. 



By Professor CHARLES L. BRISTOL, 



NEW YORK UNIVERSITY. 



WHEN the municipality of New York transformed Castle Garden 

 from an immigrant station to a public Aquarium, its location 

 alone solved two problems incident to the usefulness and maintenance 

 of such an institution. Its position, at the end of the Island of Man- 

 hattan, at the confluence of two great rivers and the harbor, in close 

 proximity to all the lines of communication with all the boroughs, 

 makes it equally accessible to all portions of the population, and pro- 

 vides for an abundant supply of salt water. 



The Aquarium has well repaid the labors of those who conceived 

 and wrought out the idea, and has justified the care and personal 

 interest bestowed upon it by President George C. Clausen, of the Park 

 Commission, if one may judge by the delight expressed by the great 

 number of people, young and old, rich and poor alike, who daily enjoy 

 the marvelous exhibition of fishes and other aquatic animals there set 

 before them. Col. James E. Jones — the director — takes great pride, 

 and justly, too, in the unbroken record of an 'open house,' and the 

 general well-being and contentment of his finny charges. 



The doors of the Aquarium are open free to all comers every day 

 between the hours of nine and four, and, at this writing, the average 

 daily attendance is more than fifty-one hundred people, while on 

 Sunday this number rises to eleven thousand. 



A word about the building before we enter it. It was built just 

 before the Avar of 1812, and named Castle Clinton. It was then two 

 hundred feet away from the shore, and was connected with it by a 

 bridge; later the shore line was extended to its present location so as to 

 include the building within it. Never very useful, the Federal Govern- 

 ment gave it to the city in 1822. As a public hall the city welcomed 

 in it many prominent persons, among whom were La Fayette, whose 

 landing was commemorated in the blue and white pottery of those 

 days; Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, and the present Prince of Wales. 

 Jenny Lind made her debut there under the management of Phineas 

 T. Barnum, at that time a youth unknown to fame. Then its halcyon 

 days passed, and it became the reception hall for the vast numbers of 

 immigrants who yearly passed through it into the life of the republic. 

 In 1896, it was restored to the people as a place of amusement, and 

 entered upon its second and, let us hope, its permanent career as an 



