Fort Wadsworth
United States military base
Fort Wadsworth is a former United States military installation on Staten Island in New York City, situated on The Narrows, which divide New York Bay into Upper and Lower bays, a natural point for defense of the Upper Bay, Manhattan, and beyond. Prior to its closing in 1994, the fort was claimed to be the longest continuously garrisoned military installation in the United States. It comprises several fortifications, including Fort Tompkins and Battery Weed, and was given its present name in 1865 to honor Brigadier General James Wadsworth, who had been killed in the Battle of the Wilderness during the Civil War. Fort Wadsworth is now part of the Staten Island Unit of Gateway National Recreation Area, maintained by the National Park Service.
History
Early history
The first use of the land for military purposes was as the site of a blockhouse built by Dutch settler David Pieterszen de Vries on Signal Hill (now the site of Fort Tompkins), in 1655. The site is said to have been continuously garrisoned since another blockhouse was built in 1663, which survived at least through 1808. During the American Revolution the area became known as Flagstaff Fort; captured by the British in 1776, it remained in British hands and was expanded until the war's end in 1783. It became the responsibility of New York State in 1806, at which time four forts were built on the site with state resources, being ready for service in 1808 though incomplete. These included the red sandstone Forts Richmond (on the site now called Battery Weed) and Tompkins, on the sites of the current forts but of different design, and Forts Morton and Hudson, with positions for a total of 164 guns in the four forts. Fort Tompkins at that time included a red sandstone enclosure containing the 1663 blockhouse.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5472233. VIAF identifies the subject as 146570100. The Library of Congress control number is n79093242. Authority coordinates are 40.605, -74.054. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1994, 1865, 1655 and 1663.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fort Wadsworth” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.