Queens Love

Manhattan may have the Empire State Building and Central Park (and Rockefeller Center and the Chrysler Building and the UN . . . oh, fine, I won’t try to compare!), but Queens has a Civil War-era fortification that has been reopened as a park facility:

The Fort Totten Battery was officially opened to the public yesterday with the completion of a $740,000 project to beautify and improve the safety of the historic site.

. . .

“This is a major facility, a big secret, but more and more people are learning about it,” said [state Sen. Frank Padavan (R-C-Bellerose)] calling it who called it [sic!] the “most unique fortification anywhere in the northeast and perhaps in the entire eastern seaboard.”

. . .

The opening of the Civil War-era battery is the first part of a two-phase project, said Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe. The second phase — the opening of a tunnel and the rehabilitation of a visitors’ center –will cost about $800,000.

And there’s more to come, said Benepe.

Bloomberg’s office has allocated some $12.6 million in the city budget for the 50-acre park — including $3.6 million in the current fiscal year — “for use to be determined to continue creation of the park,” the commissioner said.

Additional allocations are expected to come from both the state and federal sources, he added. A “Fort Totten Battery Historic Preservation and Interpretive Plan” released in 1999 calls for a total of four distinct phases of rehabilitation of the battery area.

The third phase would restore the historic landscape and open up the Endicott Batteries at the top of the fort’s hill to limited tours. The final phase would more fully open the Endicott Batteries to tours.

Totten was built as “a sort of twin to Fort Schuyler,” which is in the Bronx on the other side of the entrance to the East River from Long Island Sound, said Benepe.

The twin forts were intended to protect this entrance to the city during and after the Civil War, but work on Fort Totten stopped in 1876 and it was left unfinished because it had become outmoded as a type of military fortification, the commissioner said.

Guided tours in the winter months will be limited to 2 p.m. on Saturdays and 11 a.m. on Sundays, said a park spokeswoman.

Other tours can be arranged by calling (718) 352-4793, ext.18.