Famous Ankles

Battery Park is southern Manhattan.  That is, it’s south of everything else in Manhattan.  You can say it has several parts:  the wooded and pathway-rich park, a section of monuments including the battery itself, and the waterfront.

I don’t know quite how large it is, but it’s a very cozy park with relatively little noise and the only traffic one typically notices is the boat traffic.

Typical of NYC parks, there are lots of trees.

And some interesting statues and monuments.  The most recent one is probably “The Sphere”.

Its a remnant from the World Trade Center.  It was in the WTC’s plaza for nearly 30 years and was badly damaged at 9/11.  In 2002, an eternal flame was lit (not a good picture of that, but it’s at the lower left).

There’s a nice traditional statue of John Eriksson, the inventor of the screw propeller and the designer of the Union Ship “Monitor”, the Union’s iron-clad.  That’s a model of the Monitor in his left hand (it’s nickname was “the cheesecake on a raft”, which just goes to say that the word “cheesecake” is very different 140 years later).

 

The namesake of the park, the battery, is a circular structure that was being used to issue ferry tickets when I was there, so I didn’t get inside.  There are spots for the large cannon, as I recall.

There’s also a huge monument to World War II’s soldiers, sailors, and marines that died “in US Coastal waters.”  the names of those that died are listed by their military branch (Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Marines, Army-Air Force).  This picture captures only about half the monument.

Here’s a closeup of one of the stones.  You can see that it’s a lot more than just names.

In the center of this stone monument is an eagle statue.

The text at the bottom reads “1941 * * * 1945   Erected by the United States of American in Proud and Grateful Remembrance of Her Sons Who Gave Their Lives in Her Service and Who Sleep In The American Coastal Waters of the Atlantic Ocean    INTO THY HANDS, O LORD”

Now that’s an inscription!

Finally, there’s the waterfront.  It’s very nice, lots of seating, and a view worth traveling for.

Here’s the walkway.

And a couple of pictures of the view.  First, the Statue of Liberty.

And Ellis Island.

-H

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This entry was posted on October 15, 2007 at 7:53 pm and is filed under Battery Park, Manhattan, Wanderings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.