History
Fort Schuyler was one of many forts built along the east coast of the United States in the aftermath of the War of 1812, when it became brutally apparent that the U.S. coast was poorly defended against foreign invasion. Fort Schuyler was dedicated in 1856 after only 75% completion. The fort was strategically positioned to protect New York City from naval attack through Long Island Sound, guarding the eastern entrance to New York Harbor. It is located on Throgs Neck, the southeastern tip of the Bronx, where the East River meets Long Island Sound. Fort Totten faces it on the opposite side of the river. Their interlocking batteries created a bottle-neck of defenses against ships attempting to approach New York City.
Fort Schuyler, at its peak, boasted 440 guns. Later, it would be fitted with various other pieces throughout the ever-modernization of coastal defense artillery, once including 10-inch and 12-inch guns on disappearing carriages installed on the roof and on the peninsula around the fort. Coastal artillery emplacements at the fort lasted until 1935.
Read more about this topic: Fort Schuyler
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of the prophets. He saw with an open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)