Fort Totten is a former active United States Army installation in the New York City borough of Queens.

[3][4] Fort Totten is at the head of Little Neck Bay, where the East River widens to become Long Island Sound.

[5] While the U.S. Army Reserve continues to maintain a presence at the fort,[6] the property is now owned by the City of New York.

The fort is close to the Queens neighborhoods of Bay Terrace, Bayside, Beechhurst and Whitestone.

The initial design was drawn up by Robert E. Lee in 1857 and modified during construction by Chief Engineer Joseph G.

[9][13] One of its first missions was the development of underwater minefields, which with some modernization would remain an important coast defense element through World War II.

[12] In 1885 the Endicott Board made sweeping recommendations for new coast defenses, and among them was upgrading Fort Totten.

[12] After the American entry into World War I a number of changes took place at most stateside coast defense forts.

Their garrisons were reduced to provide trained heavy artillery crews for the Western Front, and many of their weapons were removed with a view to getting them into the fight eventually.

This left Fort Totten with four 3-inch guns that served through World War II, probably to guard the potential minefield.

According to rumor, Fort Totten was the location of the safe house where Joe Valachi, the Genovese family mob turncoat and subject of a book called "The Valachi Papers", was hidden in 1970; he was later sent to a Federal prison in Texas where he died the following year.

[citation needed] In 1974, as part of defense budget reductions following the end of the Vietnam War, and due to the disestablishment of the Nike missile system in CONUS, Fort Totten was closed as a Regular Army installation and the remaining military presence assumed by the Army Reserve.

[22] Parts are used by the New York Police Department (including the former naval minefield facilities) and the FDNY as a training center.

[23] The club building was designed by Robert E. Lee in his pre-Civil War capacity as a military engineer but not built until the 1870s, although some historians[who?]