The site was grant ed by the Cor- ])oration of New York City to the United States Government in May, 1807, and a fortification was built soon afterwards, but owing to bad engineering the foundations of the structure were not strong enough to support the weight even of what at that day was considered as heavy ordnance, and in March, 1822, the fort and ground were reconveyed to the city. For many years the building was used for the reception of distinguished strangers, for fetes and festivals, concerts, operas, and public meetings of various kinds. Here the annual fairs of the American Institute were held until the year 1855, when the Commissioners of Emigration secured the premises by lease as a landingplace for immigrants. Within a few years the long-familiar spectacle of a motley throng of poor foreigners, clad in strange garbs, and speaking more tongues than Babel ever knew, has become a thing of the i)ast. The last change in the varied history of Castle Garden was its conversion into a great free aquarium, where every day thousands of visitors find their recreation.

The Hudson River 4Of all the various tides in the affairs of this notable fort (whose aspect and name have been warlike, but whose record has all been suggestive of the piping times of peace), none has led more im.mediately to fortune, as well as fame, than Jenn}^ Lind's first concert on September ii, 1850. An account of this event was published in the New York Herald of the following morning with this commencement: The long-looked-for event has come off. Jenny Lind has sung in Castle Garden to an audience of five thousand persons. . . . Never did a mortal in this city, or perhaps any other, receive such homage as the sovereign of song received from the sovereign people.