WAR DEPARTMENT THEATER, Fort Totten

On May 16, 1857 land comprising 100 acres at Willets Point in northeast Queens was acquired from the Willet family by the government, and six years later, additional acreage was purchased from Henry Day. Additional adjoining marsh and swampland was filled in that completed the territory that would comprise the future fort, which brought the total acreage to 163 acres. Named Camp Morgan, it was used to train Civil War recruits.

The fort was designed in the shape of a rough triangle, with 8-foot thick solid stone walls. Casements were protected by 2-inch thick wrought iron shutters. The arsenal included eight 13-inch guns. Local legend says that a tunnel was constructed from the Willets fort across the East River to Fort Schuyler, but no evidence of such a tunnel has been found. Every ship coming to New York Harbor via Long Island Sound had to stop at City Island and pick up a pilot who would guide the vessel past Forts Schuyler and Totten into the East River and to a berth somewhere in the metropolitan harbor.

In July 2019, I bicycled around the fort, which is readily available for walkers and bicyclists now as most of it was converted to parkland recently, though the NYPD, FDNY and Coast Guard maintain posts there that are closed to the public. Bits and pieces of this ride will leach out here in Forgotten NY, gradually.

This is the War Department Theater, completed in 1939 under the War Department Construction Program (The US War Department is now the Department of Defense.) Military personnel and their families used the theater to view contemporary films during evenings from Sunday through Thursday, with admission costing 25 cents for adults and 18 cents for children. Military personnel wore their uniforms and nonmilitary were required to wear “appropriate civilian attire.”

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9/27/22