Park that June. City officials quickly placed the fort for sale, allowing potential buyers to preserve the fort by relocating it, but the officials rejected the sole bid from a Brooklyn junkyard operator who offered $1,120. The Fine Arts Federation of New York held an architectural design competition in August 1942, soliciting plans for a renovation of Castle Garden. Despite ongoing disputes over the fort's fate, workers began removing metal from Castle Garden on September 25, while the rest of the building remained in place for the time being. The fort's original door, attached to the wall using 768 iron bolts, was also removed. An engineer, hired by Moses to conduct a structural survey of Fort Clinton, reported a "pronounced vertical crack" on the fort's walls. Preservationists asked a New York state judge to grant an injunction to prevent demolition, but a judge declined in April 1943 to grant the injunction. Preservationists again requested that the Board of Estimate preserve the building, but the board voted in October 1945 to demolish the fort. Preservation as national monument Albert S. Bard, Walter D. Binger, and other civic reformers continued to advocate in favor of preserving the fort. In July 1946, U.S. representative Sol Bloom introduced a bill to designate Castle Garden as a U.S. national monument. Both the House and the Senate approved the legislation, and president Harry S. Truman signed the bill into law on August 12, 1946, enabling the United States Department of the Interior to determine whether to take over the fort. At the time, the city government still owned the property, and the fort could not become a national monument unless the federal government took ownership. Engineers estimated that it would cost between $40,000 and $100,000 to preserve the fort while the tunnel was being constructed. The city government would only retain the fort if the federal government agreed to pay for its restoration, though Moses did suggest constructing a monument on the site. After the United States Congress declined to allocate funding for Fort Clinton's renovation, the Board of Estimate voted yet again to demolish the fort in July 1947. Some demolition work did take place, but the structure was not totally demolished due to a lack of funding. After Interior undersecretary Oscar L. Chapman indicated in August 1947 that Congress would allocate money to the project in 1948, the board voted to delay further action