Governors Island History in Brief

Governors Island has a long military history and played an important role in every major American military engagement since the Revolutionary War, including the War of 1812, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Gulf War. First settled by the Dutch in 1624, it later became a permanent U.S. Army facility after 1800 and more recently served as the Atlantic Area headquarters of the U.S. Coast Guard. The island may originally have been called Pagganack by Lenape residents, referring to its abundance of nut trees; the Dutch called it Nooten Eyland, and in the late 1700s Britain designated it as belonging to His Majesty’s governors, producing the name Governors Island. Giovanni da Verazzano sighted it in 1524, the Dutch West India Company made it the first place they settled in New York Harbor in 1624 and built a sawmill there for timber used in New Amsterdam, and the British officially acquired it in 1698. Continental troops under George Washington occupied and fortified it in 1776 before it and New York City fell to the British, and in 1783 the British Royal Navy surrendered it to Governor George Clinton of New York State. A new fort was constructed there in 1794 using volunteers from Columbia College, and in 1833 the Army Ordnance Department established a major arsenal on the island. Between 1901 and 1912, 4,787,000 cubic yards of fill from the Lexington Avenue Subway enlarged the island from 69 to 172 acres at a cost of $1.1 million. In 1909 Wilbur Wright took off from the island and made the first flight over American waters. From 1914 to 1918 it served as a major supply base and embarkation point for troops in World War I, and from 1939 to 1945 it served as a World War II administration center and chief reception center for inductees. In 1966 the island was transferred from the Army to the Coast Guard, the Coast Guard left in 1996, and in 2002 President George W. Bush, Governor George Pataki, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the federal government would sell it back to the people of New York for $1. In 2003 George W. Bush created the Governors Island National Monument, comprising 22 acres owned and operated by the National Park Service, and that same year the island was transferred from the federal government to the people of New York through the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation.

New York, New York · United States