North and South Brother Islands, New York City

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North and South Brother Islands
Riverside Hospital North Brother Island crop.jpg
The remains of Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island, 2006.
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North and South Brother Islands
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North and South Brother Islands
Geography
Location East River, New York City
Coordinates 40°47′54″N73°53′54″W / 40.798266°N 73.898424°W / 40.798266; -73.898424 Coordinates: 40°47′54″N73°53′54″W / 40.798266°N 73.898424°W / 40.798266; -73.898424
Total islands2
Administration
State New York
borough The Bronx, formerly Queens County

North and South Brother Islands are a pair of small islands located in New York City's East River between the mainland Bronx and Rikers Island. North Brother Island was once the site of a hospital, but is now uninhabited and designated as a bird sanctuary. [1] Until 1964, South Brother Island was part of Queens County, having been incorporated into Long Island City in 1870, [2] but it is now part of Bronx County. [3] It had long been privately owned, but it was purchased by the city in 2007.

New York City Largest city in the United States

The City of New York, usually called either New York City (NYC) or simply New York (NY), is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2018 population of 8,398,748 distributed over a land area of about 302.6 square miles (784 km2), New York is also the most densely populated major city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of the state of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass and one of the world's most populous megacities, with an estimated 19,979,477 people in its 2018 Metropolitan Statistical Area and 22,679,948 residents in its Combined Statistical Area. A global power city, New York City has been described as the cultural, financial, and media capital of the world, and exerts a significant impact upon commerce, entertainment, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, art, fashion, and sports. The city's fast pace has inspired the term New York minute. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy.

East River Navigable tidal strait in New York City connecting New York Bay, the Harlem River, and the Long Island Sound

The East River is a salt water tidal estuary in New York City. The waterway, which is actually not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates the borough of Queens on Long Island from the Bronx on the North American mainland, and also divides Manhattan from Queens and Brooklyn, which are also on Long Island. Because of its connection to Long Island Sound, it was once also known as the Sound River. The tidal strait changes its direction of flow frequently, and is subject to strong fluctuations in its current, which are accentuated by its narrowness and variety of depths. The waterway is navigable for its entire length of 16 miles (26 km), and was historically the center of maritime activities in the city, although that is no longer the case.

The Bronx Borough in New York City and county in New York, United States

The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City, in the U.S. state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; northeast and east of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of Queens, across the East River. Since 1914, the borough has had the same boundaries as Bronx County, the third-most densely populated county in the United States.

Contents

According to the New York City Parks Department, which oversees the islands, North Brother Island has about 20 acres (8.1 ha) of land, [4] and South Brother Island about 6 acres (2.4 ha). [5]

History

Bodies from the General Slocum wash ashore on North Brother Island, 1904. Victims of the General Slocum (1904).jpg
Bodies from the General Slocum wash ashore on North Brother Island, 1904.

Both North Brother Island and South Brother Island were claimed by the Dutch West India Company in 1614 and both were originally named "De Gesellen", translated as "the companions" in English. [6]

Dutch West India Company Dutch trading company

Dutch West India Company was a chartered company of Dutch merchants as well as foreign investors. Among its founders was Willem Usselincx (1567–1647). On June 3, 1621, it was granted a charter for a trade monopoly in the Dutch West Indies by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and given jurisdiction over Dutch participation in the Atlantic slave trade, Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America. The area where the company could operate consisted of West Africa and the Americas, which included the Pacific Ocean and the eastern part of New Guinea. The intended purpose of the charter was to eliminate competition, particularly Spanish or Portuguese, between the various trading posts established by the merchants. The company became instrumental in the largely ephemeral Dutch colonization of the Americas in the seventeenth century. From 1624 to 1654, in the context of the Dutch-Portuguese War, the WIC held Portuguese territory in northeast Brazil, but they were ousted from Dutch Brazil following fierce resistance.

English language West Germanic language

English is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and eventually became a global lingua franca. It is named after the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes that migrated to the area of Great Britain that later took their name, as England. Both names derive from Anglia, a peninsula in the Baltic Sea. The language is closely related to Frisian and Low Saxon, and its vocabulary has been significantly influenced by other Germanic languages, particularly Norse, and to a greater extent by Latin and French.

North Brother Island

The northern of the islands was uninhabited until 1885, when Riverside Hospital moved there from Blackwell's Island (now known as Roosevelt Island). Riverside Hospital was founded in the 1850s as the Smallpox Hospital to treat and isolate victims of that disease. Its mission eventually expanded to other quarantinable diseases. The last such facility to be established on the island was the Tuberculosis Pavilion, which opened in 1943. The Pavilion was rendered obsolete within the decade due to the increasing availability, acceptance, and use of the tuberculosis vaccine after 1945. [7]

Roosevelt Island Island and neighborhood in the East River in New York City

Roosevelt Island is a narrow island in New York City's East River, within the borough of Manhattan. It lies between Manhattan Island to its west and the borough of Queens, on Long Island, to its east. Running from the equivalent of East 46th to 85th Streets on Manhattan Island, it is about 2 miles (3.2 km) long, with a maximum width of 800 feet (240 m), and a total area of 147 acres (0.59 km2). Together with Mill Rock, Roosevelt Island constitutes Manhattan's Census Tract 238, which has a land area of 0.279 sq mi (0.72 km2), and had a population of 9,520 as of the 2000 United States Census. It had a population of 11,661 as of the 2010 United States Census.

Smallpox eradicated viral disease

Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by one of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977 and the World Health Organization (WHO) certified the global eradication of the disease in 1980. The risk of death following contracting the disease was about 30%, with higher rates among babies. Often those who survived had extensive scarring of their skin and some were left blind.

Quarantine Epidemiological intervention to prevent disease transmission

A quarantine is used to separate and restrict the movement of people; it is a "restraint upon the activities or communication of persons or the transport of goods designed to prevent the spread of disease or pests," for a certain period of time. This is often used in connection to disease and illness, such as those who may possibly have been exposed to a communicable disease, but do not have a confirmed medical diagnosis. The term is often erroneously used to mean medical isolation, which is "to separate ill persons who have a communicable disease from those who are healthy," and refers to patients whose diagnosis has been confirmed.

The island was the site of the wreck of the General Slocum, a steamship that burned on June 15, 1904. Over 1,000 people died either from the fire on board the ship, or from drowning before the ship beached on the island's shores. [8]

PS <i>General Slocum</i> Passenger ship

The PS General Slocum was a sidewheel passenger steamboat built in Brooklyn, New York, in 1891. During her service history, she was involved in a number of mishaps, including multiple groundings and collisions.

According to Joseph Mitchell – a newspaper reporter and a short-story writer for The New Yorker – the island was the site of many outings of "The Honorable John McSorley Pickle, Beefsteak, Baseball Nine, and Chowder Club" organized by John McSorley of McSorley's Old Ale House; photos of the outings are featured on the walls of the bar. [9]

Joseph Quincy Mitchell was an American writer best known for his works of creative nonfiction he published in The New Yorker. His work primarily consists of character studies, where he used detailed portraits of people and events to highlight the commonplace of the world, especially in and around New York City.

<i>The New Yorker</i> Magazine on politics, social issues, art, humor, and culture, based in New York City

The New Yorker is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Started as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is now published 47 times annually, with five of these issues covering two-week spans. Although its reviews and events listings often focus on the cultural life of New York City, The New Yorker has a wide audience outside New York and is read internationally. It is well known for its illustrated and often topical covers, its commentaries on popular culture and eccentric Americana, its attention to modern fiction by the inclusion of short stories and literary reviews, its rigorous fact checking and copy editing, its journalism on politics and social issues, and its single-panel cartoons sprinkled throughout each issue.

McSorleys Old Ale House

McSorley's Old Ale House, generally known as McSorley's, is the oldest "Irish" tavern in New York City. Opened in the mid-19th century at 15 East 7th Street, in today's East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, it was one of the last of the "Men Only" pubs, admitting women only after legally being forced to do so in 1970.

Mary Mallon, also known as Typhoid Mary, was confined to the island for over two decades until she died there in 1938. [10] [6] The hospital closed shortly thereafter.

Following World War II, the island housed war veterans who were students at local colleges and their families. After the nationwide housing shortage abated, the island was again abandoned until the 1950s, when a center opened to treat adolescent drug addicts. The facility claimed it was the first to offer treatment, rehabilitation, and education facilities to young drug offenders. Heroin addicts were confined to this facility and locked in a room until they were clean. Many of them believed they were being held against their will. By the early 1960s widespread staff corruption and patient recidivism forced the facility to close.[ citation needed ] The facility is said to have been the inspiration for the Broadway play Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? , which helped to launch the career of Al Pacino. [7]

Since the mid-1960s, New York City mayors have considered a variety of uses for the island. John Lindsay, for instance, proposed to sell it, and Ed Koch thought it could be converted into housing for the homeless. The city also considered using it as an extension of the jail at Rikers Island. [7]

Now serving as a sanctuary for herons and other wading shorebirds, [7] [1] the island is presently abandoned and off-limits to the public. Most of the original hospitals' buildings still stand, but are heavily deteriorated and in danger of collapse, and a dense forest conceals the ruined hospital buildings. In October 2014, New York City Council member Mark Levine, Chair of the City Council's Parks Committee, led a delegation to visit the island, [11] and declared his desire afterwards to open the island for limited "light-touch, environmentally sensitive" public access. [12] In October 2016, New York magazine reported that the Council had commissioned a study from the University of Pennsylvania's School of Design, followed by a public hearing, on how the island could be converted into a park with controlled access by the public. [7]

South Brother Island

In the mid-19th century, Alfred W. White, who was in charge of public health for the city, used South Brother Island as the city's first dump, where garbage, manure, offal and carcasses were sent to help clean up the city, which consisted at that time of only Manhattan and its islands. However, the island is only about a half-mile from the Bronx and the country estates of the city's rich, such as William Ligett and Jacob Lorillard, both scions of tobacco families. It was also close enough to the shoreline villages of Queens County to be noxious to them as well, and the combination of Queens villages and wealthy Bronxites convinced the Queens County Supreme Court to stop the dumping. [13]

Jacob Ruppert, a brewery magnate and early owner of the New York Yankees, had a summer house on the island that burned down in 1909. [6] No one has lived on the island since then, and there are no structures extant. Ruppert owned the island until the late 1930s, and in 1944 it was purchased by John Gerosa, president of the Metropolitan Roofing Supply Company, who had wanted to construct a never-built summer retreat for his workers on the island.

A Snowy egret displaying plumage. This species is one of the inhabitants of the South island. Snowy Egret Plume.jpg
A Snowy egret displaying plumage. This species is one of the inhabitants of the South island.

In 1975, the City sold South Brother Island to Hampton Scows Inc., a Long Island investment company, for $10. [6] [14] Hampton Scows paid property taxes every year but did not develop the island.

In November 2007, the island was purchased in a complicated transaction in which $2 million of Federal grant money from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coastal and Estuarine Land Conservation Program was allocated to the Wildlife Conservation Society and The POINT Community Development Corporation. The Trust for Public Land then acquired the island on behalf of those organizations, and then donated it to the city's Parks Department as a wildlife sanctuary. [5] [6] It is managed by the city's Parks Department and the Bronx Zoo. [14] [15] South Brother Island was the 13th island to come under the Parks Department's jurisdiction. [5]

Wildlife

North Brother Island is a designated wildlife sanctuary. [7] [1] From the 1980s through the early 2000s, North Brother Island supported one of the area's largest nesting colonies of black-crowned night heron. However, as of 2008 this species has abandoned the island for unknown reasons. [16] Barn swallows use the abandoned structures for nesting, and can be seen flying over the island.

On South Brother Island, dense brush supports a major nesting colony of several species of birds, notably black-crowned night heron, great egret, snowy egret, and double-crested cormorant. New York City Audubon has monitored nesting colonies on the island for over twenty years. [17] [18]

In June 2009, North Brother Island was featured in episode 8 ("Armed and Defenseless") of Life After People on the History Channel. It was used as an example of what would happen to structures after 45 years without humans. [19] It was featured in the Broad City episode "Working Girls" and was mentioned in the episode "Twaining Day", It was also featured in the Unforgettable episode "The Island".

See also

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References

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Kevin Walsh (May 10, 2019). "The Burning Decks". Splice Today . Retrieved May 10, 2019.
  2. ↑ Beers, F.W. (1873). Long Island City. Long Island (Map). Beers, Comstock & Cline. Retrieved October 1, 2016.
  3. ↑ New York. Laws of New York; 1964, 187th Session, Chapter 578, page 1606.
  4. ↑ Staff (November 21, 2001) "Daily Plant: Over 2001 Acres Gained by October 2001" New York City Department of Parks and Recreation
  5. 1 2 3 Staff (November 29, 2007) "The Daily Plant: South Brother Island Goes To The Birds" New York City Department of Parks and Recreation
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Williams, Timothy (November 20, 2007). "City Claims Final Private Island in East River". The New York Times . Retrieved May 26, 2008.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kirby, Jen (October 27, 2016) "NYC’s North Brother Island, Abandoned for 50 Years, Might Finally Be Opened to (Legal) Visitors" New York
  8. ↑ Staff (June 16, 1904). "The General Slocum An Unlucky Craft. Has Had Collisions And Accidents By The Score. Has Run Ashore Many Times. She Was a Crack Harbor Boat Thirteen Years Ago. Capt. Van Schaick's Good Record". The New York Times . Retrieved February 28, 2010.
  9. ↑ Mitchell, Joseph (2015) Up in the Old Hotel and other stories (Kindle Edition) New York: Vintage. p.6. ISBN   0679746315
  10. ↑ Staff (November 12, 1938). "'Typhoid Mary' Dies of A Stroke at 68. Carrier of Disease, Blamed for 51 Cases and 3 Deaths, but She Was Held Immune". The New York Times . Retrieved February 28, 2010.
  11. ↑ Foderaro, Lisa (October 15, 2014). "On an Island Under Vines, New York City Officials See a Future Park". The New York Times . Retrieved November 2, 2014.
  12. ↑ Chung, Jen (October 16, 2014). "A Rare, Legal Visit To 'Spellbinding' North Brother Island". Gothamist. Archived from the original on October 27, 2014. Retrieved November 2, 2014.
  13. ↑ Eldredge, Niles & Horenstein, Sidney (2014). Concrete Jungle: New York City and Our Last Best Hope for a Sustainable Future. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. pp. 147–48. ISBN   978-0-520-27015-2.
  14. 1 2 Freedlander, David (November 20, 2007). "New York's South Brother Island to be a sanctuary". New York Newsday . Retrieved May 26, 2008.
  15. ↑ Block, Dorian (November 27, 2007). "City buys South Brother Island on East River for bird refuge". Daily News. New York.
  16. ↑ Craig, Elizabeth (December 22, 2009). "Audubon's Harbor Herons Project: 2009 Interim Nesting Survey Report" (PDF). New York City Audubon.
  17. ↑ Craig, Elizabeth (November 12, 2012). "2012 Interim Nesting Report" (PDF). NYC Audubon. Retrieved June 25, 2013.
  18. ↑ Berger, Joseph (December 4, 2003). "So, You Were Expecting a Pigeon?; In City Bustle, Herons, Egrets and Ibises Find a Sanctuary". The New York Times . Retrieved August 21, 2007.
  19. ↑ "Armed and Defenseless". History Channel. Archived from the original on October 28, 2009. Retrieved February 28, 2010.

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