Liberty Island

Liberty Island, formerly called Bedloe's Island, is a small uninhabited island in Upper New York Bay in the United States, best known as the location of the Statue of Liberty. The name Liberty Island has been in use since the early 1900s, although the name was not officially changed until 1956. Before the Statue of Liberty, Bedloe's Island was the home to Fort Wood, a multi-pointed star-shaped battery made of granite. Because of this, its nickname was "Star Fort".

The island is the property of the federal government and is operated by the National Park Service. It is accessible to the public only by ferry from Battery Park in Manhattan and by ferry from Liberty State Park in Jersey City, New Jersey. It is separated from nearby Ellis Island by approximately 1 mi (1.6 km).

Liberty Island is 2000 feet (600 meters) from Liberty State Park in Jersey City, New Jersey. By comparison it is 1-5/8 statute miles (2.6 kilometers) from Battery Park in Manhattan. Although it is not a part of New Jersey, it is situated on the New Jersey side of the boundary line between New Jersey and New York.

Since September 11, 2001, the island is guarded by round-the-clock patrols of the United States Coast Guard.

History

Liberty Island is one of several islands in New York Harbor near the mouth of the Hudson River. Over it have flown the flags of the Netherlands , England, and the United States; and for a brief time it was lent to the French government. It had also belonged to the corporation of New York City, to the State, and to several private owners.

The Mohegan called it "Minnissais," meaning "lesser island." At various times it has been known as "Great Oyster," "Love Island," "Bedloo's Island," "Kennedy's Island," "Corporation Island," "Bedlow's Island" -- an anglicized form of the original owner's name -- and later "Bedloe's," a spelling for which there is no historical basis.

Under Dutch sovereignty the island became the property of Isaack Bedloo, merchant and "select burgher" of New Amsterdam, who was born in Calais, France. His name was listed with 94 others in the "Remonstrance of the People of New Netherlands to the Director-General and Council," a protest of public-spirited citizens to the Netherlands against certain intolerable conditions. So it was not surprising that under English rule the island was formally granted to him by Governor Nicolls of New York.

Bedloo is believed to have died in 1673. His estate retained the island until 1732, when his daughter Mary sold it to Adolphe Philipse and Henry Lane for 5 shillings. During their ownership the island was temporarily commandeered as the first quarantine station by the city, which feared "that small-pox and other malignant fevers may be brought in from South Carolina, Barbadoes, Antigua, and other places, where they have great mortality."

In 1746, Archibald Kennedy bought the island for the sum of 100 pounds, for use as a summer home. During his ownership the State ordered the erection of a beacon on Bedloe's Island, for the purpose of warning New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York of the approach of an enemy.

In 1756, the Governor of New York instructed Kennedy, as presiding councillor of New York, to exercise all possible precautions to prevent the introduction of smallpox, which was then raging in Philadelphia. Kennedy permitted the use of his island again as a temporary quarantine station. In 1759, the Corporation of the City of New York bought the island for 1,000 pounds to erect a pest-house. During the next few years it was leased to several different persons for varied periods of time.

When the English occupied New York they seized Bedloe's Island and used it as a refuge for Tory sympathizers. Objecting to this use, rebels managed to set fire to all the buildings on the island and to do other damage.

The French came into the picture in 1793, using Bedloe's Island as an isolation station for three years. In 1796, the island was conveyed to the ownership of the state of New York for use as a hospital site or any other desired purpose.

By this time steps had been taken by the newly organized American federal government, in conjunction with the state, to erect fortifications to protect New York Harbor. Three sites--Governors Island, Ellis Island, and Bedloe's Island--were chosen for defense fortifications, and on February 15, 1800, by act of the New York Legislature, the three islands were ceded to the United States government.

Construction of a land battery, in the shape of an 11-point star, was begun on Bedloe's Island in 1806 and finished 5 years later. For a while referred to merely as the "works on Bedloe's Island," it later was named Fort Wood in memory of a distinguished hero of the War of 1812 who was killed in 1814 during an attack on Fort Erie.

Following the War of 1812, Fort Wood served at various times as a corps of artillery garrison, ordinance depot, and recruiting station, and intermittently as a quarantine station.

Then came Frederic Auguste Bartholdi and his "great idea," and in 1877 Bedloe's Island was chosen as the site for the Statue of Liberty Illuminating the World. Although the island was then abandoned as a military post, it remained under the control of the War Department, with the exception of an acre or so at its north end which was set aside for the Lighthouse Board which operated the light in the torch. In 1901, the lighthouse reservation also was placed under War Department control.

In October 15, 1924 the Statue of Liberty was proclaimed a national monument. In 1933, the monument, up to the boundaries of old Fort Wood, was transferred to the Department of the Interior; in 1937, the army post was declared abandoned. From then through the present day the entire island fell under the purview of the National Park Service, Department of the Interior.

Part of the original fort is still on the site and serves as the base of the statue's monument. Fort Wood was finally closed in 1944 with the remaining garrison buildings demolished by 1950.

Relationship to New York and New Jersey

It is sometimes said by New Jersey boosters that "the Statue of Liberty is actually in New Jersey." (In one extreme example, a 1994 newspaper article quoted one Richard Boggiano of Jersey City as insisting that the proper street address of the Statue of Liberty is One Communipaw Avenue, Jersey City). Such statements are incorrect. As noted above, Liberty Island has been owned by the Federal government since 1800. It is within the territorial jurisdiction of the State of New York, a status that was reaffirmed by an 1834 compact between New York and New Jersey, and which has never been officially disputed.

The belief that Liberty Island is "in" New Jersey could be a mistaken inference from three facts:

• Liberty Island's close proximity to Jersey City;
• its appearance on maps on the New Jersey side of the state line;
• New Jersey's victory in a 1998 lawsuit with New York over the ownership of Ellis Island.

It is indisputable that Liberty Island is much closer to Jersey City than it is to New York City. One reminder of this is furnished by the special New Jersey license plate (http://www.state.nj.us/mvc/images/liberty.gif) celebrating Liberty State Park in Jersey City, and featuring a picture of the Statue of Liberty.

It is also indisputable that maps draw the boundary between New Jersey and New York in the center of the Hudson River, with Liberty Island situated well on the New Jersey side of the line. The State of New Jersey in fact does retain the riparian rights to all the submerged land surrounding the statue, extending eastward to the boundary line. Perhaps a case can be made for language to the effect that Liberty Island is "geographically" within New Jersey's borders. But New Jersey has never claimed any legal rights to the dry land of Liberty Island.

The islands of New York harbor have been part of New York since the issuance in 1664 of the colonial charter that created New Jersey (see charter text (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/states/nj01.htm)). This charter stated that New Jersey "bounded by the Hudson River" rather than from the middle channel, as was common in other colonial charters. That is, as everyone understood at the time, the NY-NJ border did not go through the center of the river channel as one might naturally assume. An 1834 compact between New York and New Jersey, which primarily concerned the status of Staten Island, set the boundary line between the States as the middle of the Hudson River but reaffirmed that Staten Island and the other islands belonged to New York.

The Ellis Island lawsuit concerned a special situation. Ellis Island is mostly constructed of artificial infill. New Jersey argued and the court agreed that the 1834 compact covered only the natural parts of the island, and not the portions added by infill. Thus it was agreed that the parts of the island made of filled land belonged to New Jersey while the original natural part belonged to New York. (This proved impractical to administer and New Jersey and New York subsequently agreed to share jurisdiction of the entire island). This special situation only applies to Ellis Island and part of Shooter's Island. The natural islands such as Staten Island, Liberty Island, and Prall's Island were not and are not in dispute.

Despite the legal details, some New Jersey residents feel aggrieved that the proximity of the Statue of Liberty to New Jersey is not well known to the general public. This is best understood as part of their wider complaint that, in the words of a CNN story, [1] (http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/03/31/video.newjersey/) "New Jersey gets no respect." The Harvard Crimson [2] (http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=348495) uses exactly the same phrase, noting that New Yorkers in particular "love to scorn New Jersey" and joke about "Joizy." Given the proximity of Liberty Island to Jersey City, it is understandable that Jersey City residents could be annoyed at the frequent association of the Statue of Liberty with New York City.

External link

• National Park Service Bedloe's Island web site (http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/hh/11/hh11m.htm)
• Statue of Liberty Lighthouse (http://www.hudsonlights.com/liberty.htm) Notes on territorial history and status of Liberty islandde:Liberty Island

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