Believe it or not, the New York Aquarium is the oldest continuing operating aquarium in the United States.
It opened in 1896 and was located at Castle Clinton in Battery Park, Lower Manhattan. You might better know this as the location where you now can purchase tickets to visit the Statue of Liberty. There’s a lack of aquatic life at Castle Clinton today, and that’s because, in 1957, the New York Aquarium was moved from its original location to the Coney Island Boardwalk, where it has remained until today.
As a child, I remember visiting the New York Aquarium in the 1980s with my Cub Scout Troop. We took a train from New Jersey to New York and then took the subway to Coney Island. In my memory, this ride took forever. Actually, it was less than an hour on the subway. Sharon says she went to the New York Aquarium when she was in Kindergarten, on a class trip in the early 70s. She knows her mom was a chaperone and she has vague memories of looking at…something…in a big tank (give her some slack, she was 5 or 6).
Those are the memories we brought with us when we revisited the New York Aquarium.
