34° 



ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN. 



ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BUL LETIN 



EDITED BY THE DIRECTOR 



Elwin R. Sanborn, Asst. Editor 



Published Quarterly at the OKce of the Society, ll Wall St., 



New York City. 



Copyright, 1907, by the New York Zoological Society. 



No. 25. APRIL, 1907 



Subscription price, 50 cents for four numbers. 



Single numbers, 15 cents. 



MAILED FREE TO MEMBERS. 



Officers of tfjc ^otietp. 



^resilient : 



Cxtcutibe Committee : 



Charles T. Harney, Chairman, 



TOHN S. B\RNKS, i\lAUlSON GRANT, 



Percy R. Pyne, William White Niles, 



Samuel Thorn t, Henry Fairfield Osborn, 



Levi P. Morton, e-r-ofUcio. 



4Seneral (©{ficers: 



Secretary, Madison Grant, ii Wall Street. 

 Treasurer, Percy R. Pyne, 52 Wall Street. 

 Director, William T. IIornaday, Zoological Park. 

 Directorof the Aquarium Charles H. Townsend, B'attery Park 



Poarb of inanagerg : 



EX-OFFICIO. 

 I'ityof New York, Hon. George B. McClellan. 

 Dep't of Parks, Hon. Moses Herrman. 



Cla«!f of IdOS. Class of 1909. 



Henry F. Osborn, Levi P. Morton. 



Charles T. Barney, Andrew Carnegie, 



William C. Church, "' •■ ■ 



Lispenard Stewart, 



Hugh D. Auchincloss. 

 Charles F. Dielerich. 

 James J. Hill. 

 George F. Baker, 



Madison Grant, 

 William White Niles, 

 Samuel Thorne, 

 Henry A. C. Taylor. 

 Hugh J. Chisholm, 

 Wm. D. Sloane. 

 Winthrop Rutherfurd, 



Class of 1910. 



F. Augustus Schermerhor 

 Percy K. Pyne. 

 George B. Grinnell, 

 Jacob H. Schiff, 

 Edward J. Berwind, 

 George C. Clark, 

 Cleveland H. Dodge. 

 C. Ledyard Blair, 

 Cornelius Vanderbilt, 

 Nelson Robinson, 

 Frederick G. Bourne. 

 W. Austin Wadsworth. 



THE CENTENNIAL OF THE AQUA- 

 RIUM BUILDING. 



The three old prints re-published in this num- 

 ber of the Bulletin, seem to be appropriate, 

 since this appears to be the Centennial year of 

 the Aquarium building, the construction of 

 which was begun in 1807. They will doubt- 

 less be welcomed by all readers who are in- 

 terested in the early history of New York, 

 and the preservation of historic landmarks. 



The Director of the Aquarium recently re- 

 ceived from the War Department a letter, rela- 

 tive to the construction of this building, from 

 which the following notes are extracted : 

 I. "Many of the letters and reports of the pe- 

 riod during which the building was under con- 

 struction are missing." 2. "A foundation 

 should be made around the Bastion of the Old 

 Battery, where the flagstaff is placed, extend- 

 ing forty or fifty feet from the present, and 

 upon this foundation a Battery should be con- 

 structed in such manner, that the gun upon the 

 right will take the North River, while that 

 upon the left will range along the Courtine of 



the old Battery." (Instructions of the Secre- 

 tary of War to Lieut. Col. J. Williams, July 

 21.' 1807, 58510-115). 



Col. Williams in a letter to the Secretary 

 of War dated .\ugust 28, 1807, replied: "I find 

 that I must go at least two hundred feet out 

 from the Battery to have any command of the 

 north river." 



The deed from the Mayor, Aldermen, and 

 Commonalty of the City of New York to the 

 United States, conveying water lot, etc., is 

 dated November 17, 1807. 



The records do not show just when con- 

 struction was begun, but the building was evi- 

 dently not completed until three or four years 

 after. 



It might be appropriate for the Zoological 

 Society to celebrate the Centennial of the 

 building sometime in the autumn of the present 

 year, perhaps by opening the i\quarium at 

 night, as it is now being wired for additional 

 electric lights. 



The following from the Aquarium Circular 

 of Information is reprinted as explanatory to 

 the pictures showing the exterior and interior 

 of the building, when it was known as Castle 

 Garden : 



History of the Building. — The Aquarium 

 building was erected in 1807 by the United 

 States Government as a fort, called Southwest 

 Battery and after the war of 1812 was called 

 Castle Clinton. It had a battery of 30 guns, the 

 embrasures for which still remain in the outer 

 wall, which is 9 feet thick. The old ammuni- 

 tion rooms are surrounded with walls of ma- 

 sonry 15 feet thick. In 1823 the building was 

 ceded by Congress to the City of New York 

 and used as a place of amusement called Castle 

 Garden, which had a seating capacity of 6,000. 

 It was connected with Battery Park by a 

 bridge, the intervening space having since been 

 filled in. General Lafayette was received here 

 in 1824; President Jackson in 1832; President 

 Tyler in 1843; Louis Kossuth in 1851. Pro- 

 fessor Morse, inventor of the telegraph, dem- 

 onstrated here in 1835 the practicability of 

 controlling the electric current. Jenny Lind 

 began singing here in 1850 under the manage- 

 ment of P. T. Barnum. Among other notables 

 received here were President Van Buren and 

 the Prince of Wales. The building was used 

 as a landing place for immigrants from 1855 

 to i8go, during which period 7,690,606 immi- 

 grants passed through its doors. It was opened 

 as an aquarium by the City on December 10, 

 1896, and on November i, 1902, its manage- 

 ment was transferred from the Department of 

 Parks to the New York Zoological Society, a 



