The Natural Location

Verrazzano Narrows – the gap between Staten Island and Long Island – is the entrance to New York harbor or, alternately, the division between the lower bay, which is pretty close to being open ocean, and the upper bay, which is well protected by the hills of Staten Island and Brooklyn. It’s name is accurate – Giovanni da Verrazzano was the first European to pass through into the upper bay, and it is significantly less wide than either part of the bay. It was, therefore, the logical place to put a pair of forts to guard the harbor entrance and later to put a bridge connecting Staten and Long Islands.

The full title of the picture above is “Staten Island Tower Of The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, Fort Wadsworth In Foreground”, which is reasonably unsubtle, and part of a HAER survey called “Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, Spanning Narrows between Fort Hamilton (Brooklyn) & Fort Washington (Staten Island), Brooklyn, Kings County, NY” which is even less subtle. (Just to drive poor spellers crazy, the name of the man Verrazzano is typically spelled with two zs while the bridge is sometimes spelled with two and sometimes spelled with one.)

Here’s a view showing part of the fort better:

That’s Battery Weed, where Marie has done engineering work to preserve the long-decomissioned fort for the National Park Service.