Exploring New York’s Governors Island

The Land Beyond the Lawn Party

View from ferry arriving at Governors Island, All photos by author

I’m not exactly Gilligan or the Skipper and this isn’t a three-hour cruise but a seven-hour day trip, which begins with a ten minute voyage from the Battery Maritime Building, 10 South Street, located at the Southern tip of Manhattan.

The brief ferry ride across New York Harbor to the island offers a storybook view of the Statue of Liberty.

The $4 fee is a bargain and there’s an even shorter and equally inexpensive ferry route from the Brooklyn waterfront.

My destination, Governors Island, is far from deserted, although no one actually lives there.

This is my first visit to the 172-acre island, a former military base, although it has been open to the public since 2005.

I have traveled here for the thrilling Jazz Age Lawn Party (please read about it in the link below), but I decide to further explore this new-to-me New York City outpost.

While Governors Island has no residents today, this was formerly far from true. I pass many units of abandoned but well maintained military housing, an imposing Gothic limestone church, and a full-scale movie theatre that once provided entertainment for the men (and I am certain they were mostly men, although officers with their entire families…