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 and surrounding area is named for the artillery batteries that were built in the late 17th century to protect the fort and settlement behind them.

[1][2][3] The Dutch referred to the southern tip of Manhattan as "Capske Hook" or "Capsie Hoek", the term coming from the Lenape word "Kapsee", meaning "rocky ledge".

Proponents said that the park would serve three purposes: abetting good health, improving the behavior of the "disorderly classes", and showcasing the refinement of the city's elite.

[31]: 43–44  However, the expansion of Battery Park was opposed by wealthy merchants who deemed the proposed enlargement to be dangerous to maritime traffic, and they obtained the opinion of a United States Navy lieutenant who agreed with them.

[1][4]: 91  On State Street, the former harbor front and the northern boundary of the park, a single Federal mansion, the James Watson House, survives as part of the Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton.

[44] By 1900, the els were considered a nuisance, and there were calls to destroy the segments of elevated tracks that ran directly over the park,[45] though this did not come to pass for another fifty years.

[48] By that time, the IRT Lexington Avenue Line, the Joralemon Street Tunnel to Brooklyn, and the South Ferry subway terminal were being built directly under the park.

[64] In 1937, Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes proposed making Battery Park into a landscaped "front door" for New York City, with a semicircular seawall and a curving plaza.

[79][80] In Battery Park's new layout, it contained a landscaped esplanade, a raised waterfront terrace, and an oval lawn with a playground.

[89] The success of the development resulted in attention and new funding for Battery Park projects, such as $5 million for a garden near Castle Clinton.

[91] However, by the 1990s, Battery Park was worn down, and many of the nearby residents and tourists shunned it altogether, except when taking boats to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

[95] Although Battery Park was used as an emergency staging site following the September 11 attacks in 2001, construction on the upper promenade continued largely uninterrupted, and it opened in December 2001.

[99][100] Some restoration projects were undertaken in Battery Park in the 2010s, including the addition of a community garden, the renovation of a promenade, and the construction of the SeaGlass Carousel.

which was expected to cost $169 million by the end of 2023, would raise the shoreline by up to 5 feet (1.5 m) to protect the park from sea level rise.

[114] Located nearby is a 4-acre (1.6 ha) garden called the Battery Bosque, which was designed by Dutch landscape architect Piet Oudolf and is centered around a grove of 140 plane trees.

Later roofed over, it became one of the premier theatrical venues in the United States and contributed greatly to the development of New York City as the theater capital of the nation.

[27] In the early 1850s alone, the venue hosted such acts as Swedish soprano Jenny Lind,[132] European dancing star Lola Montez,[133] French conductor Louis-Antoine Jullien,[133] and the Max Maretzek Italian Opera Company.

[134][135][136] The migration of the city's elite uptown increased during the mid-19th century, and in 1855, Castle Garden was closed and made into the world's first immigration depot.

[27][137] The structure then housed the New York Aquarium from 1896 to 1941, when it was closed as part of Triborough Bridge Authority commissioner Robert Moses's plans to build the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel.

It contains a small history exhibit and ticket booths for the ferries to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island; in addition, it occasionally hosts concerts.

[141] The SeaGlass Carousel was proposed in 2007[142] and opened in 2015; plans for the ride had been devised by Warrie Price, the founding president of the Battery Park Conservancy.

[103] The carousel is designed to resemble an under-the-sea garden through which visitors ride on fish that appear to be made of sea glass and shimmer as though they were bioluminescent.

[153] The Netherland Monument with its flagpole was dedicated on December 6, 1926, as a gift from the Dutch in commemoration of the purchase of Manhattan Island three centuries prior.

[157][158] The memorial was designed by the architectural firm of Gehron & Seltzer, while the eagle statue was created by Albino Manca, an Italian-born sculptor.

The bronze sculpture depicts four merchant seamen with their sinking vessel after it had been attacked by German submarine U-123 during World War II.

Representatives of NYC Park Advocates and the Italian-American organization UNICO expressed concern about the statues' condition, although experts said there should be no long-term physical harm.

[178] The bikeway contains three connections to other parts of the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway: Across State Street to the northeast is Bowling Green,[114] as well as the old U.S. Customs House, now used as a branch of the National Museum of the American Indian and the district U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

Another, long portion of the wall was embedded permanently into the entrance to the newly constructed station, at the same depth below street level as originally discovered.

[190] Robert Tierney, chairman of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, said that the wall was probably built to protect the park's original artillery batteries.