IRONICALLY enough it’s been about five years since I have set foot on Governors Island, and it was recently made available (via a 10-minute ferry ride) for visits year round. Perhaps this will be the year; I’d prefer to do it before or after the summer, when it’s at its most crowded. Though recently modernized with tourist attractions like artificial hiking hills and a concert venue (built at the cost of the island’s apartments, golf course and Burger King for the armed services personnel who once were the residents), it’s chockablock with historic buildings.
One of these is Castle Williams. With walls forty feet high and eight feet thick, this red sandstone bastion bristled with over one hundred cannons when it was completed in 1811. Named after its designer, Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Williams, it has also been nicknamed the “Cheesebox” because of its circular shape. Castle Williams, with its twin fort, Castle Clinton in the Battery, was built to guard the waterway between Governors Island and New York City. Together these forts provided such a formidable defense that the British fleet never attempted to attack New York City during the War of 1812.
There was never a shot fired in anger from Castle Williams, but in 1966 when command was changed from the army to the coast guard, the cannons atop the fort were fired ceremoniously. The vibrations from the noise unexpectedly shattered all the windows. The Castle was used as a jail from the Civil War through 1966. Castle Williams held as many as 1,000 Confederate soldiers during the Civil War; several died here and are buried at Cypress Hills National Cemetery in Brooklyn. Walt Disney and Rocky Graziano were imprisoned here at one point for being AWOL from the army. Several prisoners are said to have escaped from here and successfully swam to Brooklyn. Castle Williams is called a “castle” not because of its shape or because it housed royalty, but because it was built entirely of stone. Structures built of stone along with wood and other materials bear the name of “fort.”
Much more from this assessment of Governors Island from nearly 20 years ago compiled by my colleague Christina Wilkinson, president of the Newtown Historical Society.
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3/2/23