42 ZOOLOGICAL 
SOCIETY BULLETIN 
CASTLE GARDEN AS THE LANDING PLACE FOR IMMIGRANTS, 1890 
The structure and its outbuildings were enclosed within a wall 
aquarium, the roof was altered again to admit 
more light and was extended nearer to the edge 
of the masonry wall. 
The building as it appears at present, is de- 
scribed in The New New York by John C. Van 
Dyke, as follows: 
“If such a fate [referring to old landmarks 
outliving their usefulness| should overtake the 
Aquarium (formerly Castle Garden) there would 
be few mourners. It has no beauty about it, and 
the only thing that is saving it just now is its 
enforced use. It makes a fairly decent building 
for an aquarium, and besides it is located in 
Battery Park and no one is crying for the land 
it occupies. 
“Tt now houses the finest collection of fishes in 
the world but it has almost completely lost its 
old character. 
“Instead of covering a tiny island, it rests 
bedded in the stone slabs of Battery Park and 
looks somewhat like a half-sunken tank. 
Sentiment may cling about it, and the folk with 
neither New York ancestry nor history may 
reverence it because it is so ‘very old’ but in 
reality it is sad rubbish and has little place in 
the new city. There is not a building in lower 
New York that goes back to the time of the 
Dutch occupation, and very few that belong to 
the later English occupation.” 
gas 
That it is unsightly cannot be denied, but its 
unsightliness lies wholly in its wooden super- 
structure, which should be removed because it is 
other reason. Besides, 
it is old and weak. We should like to see every- 
thing above the level of the nine-foot-thick walls 
forming the fort of 1811, shaved clean off. Havy- 
ing thus got back to original principles, the 
a fire trap, if for no 
architects would soon design a fitting superstruc- 
ture. *The accompanying sketch by the writer 
has been warmly approved by prominent arch- 
itects, as not only solving the problems of provid- 
ing more room for the Aquarium and saving in- 
tact the walls of old Southwest Battery with all 
their gun embrasures, but entirely eliminating 
the deplored unsightliness. 
Van Dyke’s comparison to a half-sunken gas 
tank, comes nearer the truth than he supposed. 
The building in its original situation carried its 
guns well above high tide. Now that it is im- 
bedded within the general level of Battery Park, 
its high gun embrasures are brought within three 
feet of the ground. How deeply its massive 
walls have been sunken may readily be judged 
by comparing its height on land with the earlier 
prints showing it surrounded by water. Built 
upon part of an off-shore reef known to the 
*See table of contents. 
