Davids Island (New Rochelle, New York)

 military, place with historical importance, United States Army

Davids Island is named for Thaddeus Davids (1816-1894), a New Rochelle ink manufacturer, who owned the island between 1856 and 1867. Davids was next-to-last in a line of private owners and lessees associated with the island between circa 1700 and the 1860s. During this period, the island was used primarily as farmland, but beginning probably in the 1840s, it also became a destination for excursionists who traveled by steamboat from New York and Brooklyn to picnic by the sea. The U.S. Army leased the island in 1862 and purchased it outright in 1867. In 1967, the federal government sold Davids Island to the City of New Rochelle, which sold it in turn the following year to Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. Consolidated Edison returned ownership of most of the island to the city in 1976.

Two U.S. Army posts successively occupied Davids Island between 1862 and 1965. The earlier post was established as De Camp General Hospital in May 1862. The hospital treated wounded Union soldiers and, from 1863 onwards, also cared for Confederate prisoners of war. After the Civil War, the Army remained on the island, apparently using the post somewhat discontinuously as a hospital, mustering-out camp, and subdepot for recruits. By the early 1870s, the hastily-built wood frame buildings of the Civil War had deteriorated badly, and in October 1874 the Army entirely withdrew from the island, beginning a hiatus in occupation of nearly four years.

The Army returned in July 1878, when Davids Island was designated as a principal depot of the General Recruiting Service, supplanting Governors Island off lower Manhattan in that role. Originally known simply as Davids Island, the Army formally named the post Fort Slocum in 1896 to honor Maj. Gen. Henry Warner Slocum (1827-1894), a prominent Union soldier and New York politician. Recruit intake and training was a primary function of the post well into the twentieth century. Fort Slocum also saw service as an overseas embarkation station; hosted Army specialty schools for bakers, transportation officers, chaplains, public affairs personnel, and military police; provided retraining for court-martialed soldiers; and was an administrative center for the Air Force. Coastal artillery batteries operated at the post around the beginning of the twentieth century. During the Cold War, Fort Slocum supported an air defense missile battery.

When the post closed in 1965, Fort Slocum’s landscape integrated elements from different episodes of development into a campus-like whole. Several episodes of development were represented, particularly 1885-1910 and 1929-1940. A few wood frame buildings remained from the late 1870s and early 1880s, and at least nine such buildings represented the Second World War. However, of the more than 50 temporary wood frame buildings erected during the First World War, only a single, partial example survived. Most of the buildings at Fort Slocum followed standard Army plans, but Army personnel or outside professional architects also produced a few designs specifically for the post. The permanent buildings at Fort Slocum generally reflected conservative and eclectic interpretations of different currents in American architecture, producing an engaging mix of Colonial Revival, Neoclassical, Romanesque, and Italianate styles. The temporary buildings around the post were in contrast unadorned and starkly utilitarian, as they were designed principally for speed of construction.

The period after Fort Slocum closed in November 1965 saw severe deterioration of the former Army post. The City of New Rochelle repeatedly sought to redevelop Davids Island, at one time considering a Consolidated Edison proposal to build a nuclear power plant and later supporting proposals for luxury residences. None of these plans materialized. Neglect and vandalism took a heavy toll on the former post. By the first decade of the twenty-first century, the landscape was overgrown, and the more than 100 buildings and structures that once comprised Fort Slocum were in decay and ruin.

During the late 1980s-1990s, Donald Trump mounted a concerted effort to buy the island and turn it into a posh condo and mansion island and marina; however government and public outcry stopped the plan before it came to pass. The City of New Rochelle voted not to preserve any of the historic buildings and all were removed by the summer of 2008. Sic transit gloria mundi.

davidsisland.westchesterarchives.com/
www.hudsonvalleyruins.org/yasinsac/newroc/slocum.html