Governors Island - 20th Century

20th Century

By 1912, when it was known as Governors Island, the Island's administrative leaders included General Tasker H. Bliss, who would become Army Chief of Staff in 1917. In 1939, the island became the headquarters of the U.S. First Army.

Prior to the construction of Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, the island was considered as a site for a municipal airport. It did hold a small grass strip, Governors Island Army Airfield, from the 1950s until the 1960s.

The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel passes underwater and off-shore of the island's northeast corner, its location marked by a ventilation building connected to the island by a causeway. At one point prior to WWII, Robert Moses proposed a bridge across the harbor, with a base located on Governors Island. The intervention of the War Department quashed the plan as a possible navigational threat to the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Tom (1937) and Dick Smothers (1939), also known as the Smothers Brothers, were born on the island, as was comic book (Batman, Green Lantern) artist Neal Adams (1941). In November 1964, after a year long study of by the Department of Defense to cut costs and reduce the number of military installations, Fort Jay and Brooklyn Navy Yard were identified to be closed by 1966.