Final Years of Use and Preservation
The U.S. Coast Guard arrived on Governors Island in 1966 and initially considered demolishing the castle. Instead it became a community center that provided a nursery, meeting rooms for scouts and clubs, a woodworking shop, art studios, a photography laboratory, and a museum. With the relocation of those civilian functions to new locations on the island in the mid-1970s, the castle ended its military career in a state of mild neglect as a storage facility and landscape shop for the Coast Guard. When the Governors Island Coast Guard base closed in 1997, the General Services Administration stabilized the building with replacement windows and a new roof.
In 2003, Castle Williams and the neighboring fortification, Fort Jay, were transferred to the National Park Service under the administration of the Governors Island National Monument. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
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