Fort Decatur was a

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

blockhouse A blockhouse is a small fortification, usually consisting of one or more rooms with loopholes, allowing its defenders to fire in various directions. It is usually an isolated fort in the form of a single building, serving as a defensive stro ...

erected on the ocean front of the far-western Rockaway Peninsula during the

War of 1812 The War of 1812 (18 June 1812 – 17 February 1815) was fought by the United States of America and its indigenous allies against the United Kingdom and its allies in British North America, with limited participation by Spain in Florida. It ...

. Its purpose was to protect New York Harbor from invaders, particularly British. After the war, the fort was dismantled and the western tip of Rockaway returned to its fallow, uninhabited state for decades to come before its first true development in the late 19th century.

External links

Rockaway..."place of waters bright"

Sources

Vincent Seyfried Vincent Francis Seyfried (April 18, 1918-April 14, 2012, aged 93) was an American historian of Long Island. His work between 1950 and 2010 includes eleven books on trolley systems in Queens and Long Island, twelve books on areas of Queens, a seven-v ...

and William Asadorian, ''Old Rockaway, New York, in Early Photographs'',

Dover Publications Dover Publications, also known as Dover Books, is an American book publisher founded in 1941 by Hayward and Blanche Cirker. It primarily reissues books that are out of print from their original publishers. These are often, but not always, books ...

, Mineola, NY, 2000. Decatur Rockaway, Queens Decatur, Fort Blockhouses {{QueensNY-struct-stub