Abstract
Fort Tilden, located along the south shore of western Long Island, is a historic Army base commissioned in 1917 as part of the harbor defenses of New York, and transferred in 1974 to the National Park Service (NPS) as part of Gateway National Recreation Area. The 309-acre military reservation, located on a narrow barrier beach framed by the great expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, includes a fortification area with defensive works, and a post and wharf (Quartermaster) area with support facilities such as barracks, warehouses, drill grounds, and a
parade ground. Today, Fort Tilden illustrates changes in management that, over the course of four decades, have altered and concealed its historic military character. From a largely open landscape with inconspicuous military works and a dense cluster of support buildings, the landscape today has converted to a natural maritime woodland and recreational area that retain many traces of Fort Tilden’s historic strategic role in the New York harbor defenses. Fort Tilden is located on the eastern end of the Rockaway Peninsula barrier
beach within the New York City borough of Queens, approximately six miles east of the mouth of New York Harbor (fig. 0.1). Encompassing all of the former Fort Tilden Military Reservation except for a small parcel retained by the military as an Army Reserve Center, the park is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the south,
Rockaway Beach Boulevard on the north, Beach 169th Street to the east, and Beach 193rd Street to west (fig. 0.2). A small northern extension of the fort fronts on the Rockaway Inlet (Jamaica Bay) north of Rockaway Beach Boulevard between the former US Coast Guard Rockaway Station and the community of Roxbury.
PURPOSE, SCOPE, AND METHODS
A Cultural Landscape Report (CLR) is the primary document used by the National Park Service for management of its historically significant cultural landscapes. A CLR provides park managers with a comprehensive site history, documents existing conditions, evaluates the historic significance and character of the landscape, and provides treatment recommendations to guide short and long-term management. This report for Fort Tilden has been developed according to the Guide to Cultural Landscape Reports: Contents, Process, and Techniques (1998). It consists of Part I of a CLR (Site History, Existing Conditions,and Analysis and Evaluation), along with preliminary treatment recommendations (but not a full treatment plan which comprises Part II of a CLR). The Site History and Existing Conditions sections document in narrative and graphic form the physical evolution of the landscape through to the present.