Castle Clinton National Monument

New York, NY

From the earliest days of the Republic, the vessels of the U.S. Coast Guard and its ancestor services—the Revenue Cutter Service among them—sailed from New York to defend the young nation and protect its commerce. During the War of 1812, cutters such as the Vigilant took part in the maritime fight against British power. This panel honors that long tradition of service launched from the harbor.

New York, NY

This granite obelisk at the crossing of Fifth Avenue and Broadway honors William Jenkins Worth, a soldier from Hudson, New York, whose career traced the young republic's expanding military ambitions. He earned his commission in the War of 1812, spent the 1820s shaping the officer corps as Commandant of Cadets at West Point, and won his greatest fame in the hard-fought campaigns of the Mexican-American War of the 1840s. When he died in 1849, the city he served brought him home, and the monument that rose over his grave became one of the very few burial sites in Manhattan marked by a public memorial.

New York, NY

This memorial stands for America's merchant mariners — the civilian sailors who crewed cargo and supply ships and whose losses lie in the unmarked depths of the sea. Merchant seamen have long borne heavy casualties, especially in wartime, when their vessels ran gauntlets of submarines and mines to keep the nation supplied. The memorial gives a place of remembrance to men who have no marked graves.

New York, NY

Opened on May 25, 1950, the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel runs beneath New York Harbor to link Lower Manhattan with Brooklyn, and at 9,170 feet was celebrated as the longest continuous underwater vehicular tunnel in North America. Built in the era of Robert Moses's sweeping public-works program, it threaded automobile traffic under the harbor rather than over it, preserving the view from Battery Park. This plaza marks its Manhattan portal.