The Battery, formerly known as Battery Park, is a 25-acre (10 ha) public park located at the southern tip of Manhattan Island in New York City facing New York Harbor. It is bounded by Battery Place on the north, with Bowling Green to the northeast, State Street on the east, New York Harbor to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. The park contains attractions such as an early 19th-century fort named Castle Clinton; multiple monuments; and the SeaGlass Carousel. The surrounding area, known as South Ferry, contains multiple ferry terminals, including the Staten Island Ferry's Whitehall Terminal; a boat launch to the Statue of Liberty National Monument ; and a boat launch to Governors Island.
Aerial view of the Battery in 2010. At park's left is Pier A, at park's right is South Ferry Terminal. On the far right is the East River.
1793 rendering of the flagpole and recent plantings at the Battery
The James Watson House, 1793–1806, attributed to John McComb Jr., and adjoining shrine to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton face Battery Park
Battery Place station foreground right; South Ferry station left
Manhattan is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is coextensive with New York County, the smallest county by geographical area in the U.S. state of New York. Located almost entirely on Manhattan Island near the southern tip of the state, Manhattan constitutes the center of the Northeast megalopolis and the urban core of the New York metropolitan area. Manhattan serves as New York City's economic and administrative center and has been described as the cultural, financial, media, and entertainment capital of the world.
Midtown Manhattan, the world's largest central business district, in the foreground, with Lower Manhattan and its Financial District in the background
New Amsterdam, centered in what eventually became Lower Manhattan, in 1664, the year England took control and renamed it New York
Statue of George Washington in front of Federal Hall on Wall Street, where in 1789 he was sworn in as the first U.S. president.
Manhattan's Little Italy on the Lower East Side, c. 1900