Fort Tompkins (Staten Island)

A Patriot redoubt built in June 1776, located on Signal Hill at The Narrows on Staten Island. Site of an earlier 1663 blockhouse that stood until at least 1808, preceded by one built by Dutch settler David Pieterszen de Vries in 1636 and destroyed in the Peach Tree War of 1655. Taken by the British in July 1776 and by July 1779 a redoubt with gun platforms for 26 cannon was built. Two months later, six 24-pounders and four 18-pounders were recorded on hand. In 1782 the fort had five bastions and several barbette batteries. Evacuated by the British in 1783 at the end of the Revolution. In 1806 Flagstaff Fort was demolished and Fort Tompkins was built on the site, reportedly enclosing the 1663 blockhouse with red sandstone. That fort along with others grew into Fort Wadsworth. The site is now part of the Gateway National Recreation Area of the National Park Service.

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 halves, a natural point for defense of the Upper Bay and Manhattan beyond. Prior to closing in 1994 it claimed to be the longest continually 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.

The National American Indian Memorial or North American Indian Memorial was a proposed monument to Native Americans to be erected on a bluff overlooking the Narrows, the main entrance to New York Harbor. The major part of the memorial was to be a 165-foot-tall (50 m) statue of a representative American Indian warrior atop a substantial foundation building housing a museum of native cultures, similar in scale to, but higher than, the Statue of Liberty several miles to the north. Ground was broken to begin construction in 1913 but the project was never completed and no physical trace remains today.

Battery Weed is a four-tiered 19th century fortification guarding the Narrows, the main approach from the Atlantic Ocean to New York City. Located on the Staten Island waterfront on the west shore of the Narrows, directly across from Fort Hamilton and the now-destroyed Fort Lafayette in Brooklyn, the fort was intended to protect New York from attack by sea. When built, it was named Fort Richmond, as was a previous fort on the site.

Fort Tompkins Light was a lighthouse located on Staten Island, New York City, on the west side of the Narrows in New York Bay.The lighthouse was established by Fort Tompkins Military Base in 1828 to guide ships to Staten Island. The lighthouse did not keep records due to its close proximity to land. Consequently, very little record survives beyond those kept by the lighthouse board. The Board archives illustrate the precarious location of the lighthouse. On more than one occasion the lighthouse became a target and various explosions caused the glass in the lantern room to break. They moved the lighthouse in 1871 out of battery range and it was no longer near the water. Its first light in the new location was in 1872. A fourth order Fresnel lens was installed in 1900. The light was an alternate flashing red and white with an interval between flashes of 10 seconds. Three years later the lighthouse was deactivated. The lighthouse's duties were given to the Fort Wadsworth Light in 1903. Soon after, the lighthouse was abandoned. It no longer exists. The tower stood on a Victorian-style home with a white dwelling, Mansard roof and a black lantern.

Fort Wadsworth Light is a 1903 lighthouse built atop Battery Weed on Staten Island in New York Harbor. The light illuminates the Narrows, the entrance to the harbor. It is located under the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. Fort Wadsworth Light was part of the transfer of Fort Wadsworth from the Navy to the National Park Service in March 1995 as part of Gateway National Recreation Area. Its light was visible for 14 nautical miles (26 km; 16 mi). The lantern was possibly moved from Fort Tompkins Light in 1903. When the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge opened in 1965 the lighthouse became obsolete. Dark for many years, it was restored and converted to solar power by volunteers in 2005.

Lily Pond Avenue is a relatively short primary artery in the South Beach, Arrochar, Concord, and Shore Acres neighborhoods in the New York City borough of Staten Island.

Fort Wadsworth was a station on the demolished South Beach Branch of the Staten Island Railway, near the historic Fort Wadsworth. It had two side platforms and two tracks, and was located at Fingerboard Road. This station was abandoned when the SIRT discontinued passenger service on the South Beach Branch to Wentworth Avenue at midnight on March 31, 1953, because of city-operated bus competition.The unused station, overgrown with weeds, remained in place until the 1970s. The location where the station and tracks previously existed, at what is currently the intersection of Tompkins Avenue and Lyman Avenue in Rosebank/Fort Wadsworth, is now occupied by a collection of town homes that are noticeably newer than the surrounding residences. The path of the former track leading to South Beach, at a lower grade, is now occupied by a power substation.

Shore Acres is a neighborhood of Staten Island, one of the five boroughs of New York City. It is situated along the Upper New York Bay, just north of Fort Wadsworth and south of Rosebank. Shore Acres is generally considered to be bounded by Bay Street on the west, the Upper New York Bay on the east, Nautilus Street on the north, and Arthur Von Briesen Park on the south.

Arrochar was a station on the demolished South Beach Branch of the Staten Island Railway. It had two side platforms and two tracks and was located at Major Avenue. The station was able to platform two train cars.

The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge ( vər-ə-ZAH-noh; also referred to as the Verrazzano Bridge, locally as the Verrazzano, and formerly as the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge or Narrows Bridge) is a suspension bridge connecting the New York City boroughs of Staten Island and Brooklyn. It spans the Narrows, a body of water linking the relatively enclosed New York Harbor with Lower New York Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. It is the only fixed crossing of the Narrows. The double-deck bridge carries 13 lanes of Interstate 278: seven on the upper level and six on the lower level. The span is named for Giovanni da Verrazzano, who in 1524 was the first European explorer to enter New York Harbor and the Hudson River. Engineer David B. Steinman proposed a bridge across the Narrows in the late 1920s, but plans were deferred over the next twenty years. A 1920s attempt to build a Staten Island Tunnel was aborted, as was a 1930s plan for vehicular tubes underneath the Narrows. Discussion of a tunnel resurfaced in the mid-1930s and early 1940s, but the plans were again denied. In the late 1940s, urban planner Robert Moses championed a bridge across the Narrows as a way to connect Staten Island with the rest of the city. Various problems delayed the start of construction until 1959. Designed by Othmar Ammann, Leopold Just, and other engineers at Ammann & Whitney, the bridge opened on November 21, 1964, and a lower deck in 1969 to alleviate high levels of traffic. The New York City government began a $1.5 billion reconstruction of the bridge's two decks in 2014. The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge has a central span of 4,260 feet (1.30 km; 0.81 mi). It was the longest suspension bridge in the world until it was surpassed by the Humber Bridge in the United Kingdom in 1981. The bridge has the 18th-longest main span in the world, as well as the longest in the Americas. When the bridge was officially named in 1960, it was misspelled "Verrazano-Narrows Bridge" due to an error in the construction contract; the name was officially corrected in 2018. The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge collects tolls in both directions, although only westbound drivers paid a toll from 1986 to 2020 in an attempt to reduce traffic congestion.

Belair Road is a demolished station on the abandoned South Beach Branch of the Staten Island Railway. It had two side platforms and two tracks, and was located at Vermont Avenue, between Belair Road & St. Johns Avenue. This station served the US Quarantine station, which was one block to the east.The Belair Road station was built out of wood, and could only platform two cars. There was a shelter on one of the platforms. The station was rebuilt in 1936 with concrete. It was rebuilt with an underground access walkway on both sides of the station. North of the station, there was a trestle built at Saint John's Avenue in 1936 to allow the road to pass over the right-of-way. Today, all that is left of the trestle is a stanchion that has been morphed into part of someone's backyard, with a pool on top.This station was abandoned when the SIRT discontinued passenger service on the South Beach Branch to Wentworth Avenue at midnight on March 31, 1953 because of city-operated bus competition.