What a wonderful photo!   (Believe it or not;  because of the display properties of the website it was either this size or TOO huge to see.  But ignoring the labels, just look at the photo first.  Then, copy it to your own hard drive, open it up in Explorer, and you can zoom in and out as necessary to read the labels.)  This is  Davids’ Island in 1889, between the Civil War and the Spanish-American War, between a post largely of wood and a permanent post of brick, before the mortar pits went in, soldiers enjoying baseball a scant quarter-century after Abner Doubleday commanded the Island.

            We see here the beginnings of the post which the USACE is now pulling down.

            Yet already by the time of this photo, the post has undergone profound transformation.   The last of wooden buildings built for the Civil War DeCamp General Hospital were gone by 1888, though they were reported to be falling apart by the early 1870’s.   The Army abandoned the island in 1874, and when it reoccupied it in 1878 for use as the Principal Depot of the General Recruiting Service, it had to contend with these Civil War relics.   Scraps were used from the worst buildings to patch and shore up the better ones, but the situation was unsatisfactory.  Roofs leaked, supplies and papers were endangered, the whole post was an embarrassment to the recruiting mission.  

In 1878 it was decided to build the post in brick;  but it took some time to get funding, so in the interim certain buildings were built in wood.   These included three sets of duplex officers’ quarters (bldgs. 2-7  --  which survived to the end) and some wooden barracks (which were phased out from the 1890’s and finally disappeared with the construction of the Quadrivium 1906-08).   It wasn’t until 1886, with the construction of the model Consolidated Mess Hall (bldg. 120) that brick construction started in earnest.  Thereafter however it would continue, and gave the subsequent post its architectural continuity.

This photo, one of the oldest in existence showing Davids’ Island, catches the post at this critical juncture in its development;  and it captures a panoramic view of many buildings and landmarks.  It can be dated to about 1889 simply because of the series of permanent brick buildings built along the eastern edge of the parade field in the 1880’s, three (the Consolidated Mess Hall, bldg. 120, 1886;  barracks 52, 1887;  and the southern octagonal barracks, bldg. 53, 1888) are complete, while the northern octagonal barracks (bldg. 51, 1889  --  the one we knew as The Chapel Center) does not yet appear.

            Already however the parade field, the defining feature of the post to its very end, has been laid out.   It then remained to fill in the buildings along its edges.   Not many people are aware of this, but there was a plan in 1878 to run Officers’ Row all the way up the western end of the parade field as a straight line of cookie-cutter wood frame houses;  and to run a line of cookie-cutter wood frame barracks all the way down the eastern end.  (The D&D building, and its twin the post HQ in this photo, were the only ones actually built.  Imagine Officers’ Row as duplexes identical to bldgs. 2-7 all the way up to our later Officers’ Club;  and the opposite edge continuing a series of barracks exactly like the post HQ in this photo, with none of the brick buildings, and you will have imagined what the plan called for.) 

This would have produced a post entirely continuous architecturally if much less durable.  In any event it did not happen.  A report to the AGO that year by Maj. Samuel Nicoll Benjamin recommended instead that barracks be concentrated in the NE, and that a shorter Officer’s Row follow the natural contour of the parade field.   The  recommendations of the Benjamin Report largely were adopted, which accounts for the continued dogleg in Officers’ Row from bldgs. 10 & 11, and the fact that the southeast edge of the parade field was filled in only later  --  as indeed was Officers’ Row only gradually extended northward, but this was for reasons of funding.  But here we see the 1880’s brick buildings defining the eastern edge, and officers quarters up to bldg. 13 defining the western edge;  and these elements remained to the very end.

            So it is easy for those of us who lived there from WWI through the Cold War to recognize at a glance that this 1889 view is indeed the Fort Slocum we would come to know.

            There are 26 buildings in the view.  Of these only 8 (2 barracks, the mess hall, and 5 buildings for officer housing) remained to the end.  Some of these were replaced by later buildings:   the 1872 surgeon’s quarters by bldgs. 10 & 11;  the QM Sgt’s quarters by bldgs. 14-17;  the QM storehouse by the Officers Club bldg. 18;  the old wooden hospital by a brick hospital, bldg. 151 (the one we knew as the Chaplain School),  of about the same design and size, only set back a little;  the hospital steward’s quarters by bldg. 152 (the Cold War post dispensary) also set back a little;  the D&D building and the 8 wooden barracks by the Quadrivium barracks (bldgs. 54-57).   Thus the essential outlines of the post were preserved even though a majority of the actual buildings in this view were destroyed by 1911.

            Some were never replaced.  The boiler house may have been built to provide steam heat to the 1880’s buildings, also for steam cooking at the mess hall;  for whatever reason it was removed within about a decade or so.  (It was the only brick building ever built on the parade field.)  After the post HQ burned in 1899 there was briefly a plan to build a new one in the same general location, but in 1909 this was changed and the post HQ we knew (bldg. 116) was built at the NW end of the island instead.  The sutler’s store (later an Officers’ Club) and the ice house were also destroyed about the time the Quadrivium was built, 1906-08.

            And of course the pond.  This is the best of only three known photos of it,  a natural freshwater pond fed by springs.  It was used for swimming in the summer, cutting ice & ice-skating in the winter.  It was filled in by about 1909-10 ostensibly to provide more drill space.

            And then the disappeared landmark you can’t see.  How was this elevated photo taken in 1889?   From the 1884 brick water tower  --  50 feet tall, itself situated on the highest point of the island  -- destroyed in 1929 after the steel water tower was completed, at the NW corner of Davids' Island.