Location: East River Map
Area: 20.12 acres (81,400 m2)
North Brother Island lies in
the middle of the East River between the Bronx and Riker's Island in
a state of New York. Even though it is surrounded by New York City
and its suburbs the island is off limits to the public. Despite that
people still risk breaking a law and make their way on the this
small piece of property. North Brother Island is located close to
port Morris in New York. Today it is abandoned for over 50 years,
but in the late 19th and early 20th century it was filled with
thousands of patients, doctors, nurses and other hospital staff.
Ghostly ruins of a hospital still remembers those who were sent here
and those who died here.
Its history begin in 1885 when
Historic Riverside Hospital that was moved here. North Brother
island served as a quarantine for people sick with small pox,
typhoid as well as other transmittable diseases. The most famous
resident of this medical complex was Mary Mallon, more commonly
known as Typhoid Mary. She spent two years here until her death in
1938.
After World War II become a residence for returning
veterans. Here they lived with their families while attending
college in New York. In the 50's former hospital was transformed
into a centre to treat adolescent drug addicts. North Brother Island
medical facilities were intended to treat and rehabilitate youth,
but staff corruption and cruelty against patients forced closure of
the centre in 1960's. Since then it was turned into a bird sanctuary
that is closed to public. Buildings of the hospital were not turned
down. Instead they were left alone to deteriorate on their own. If
you do manage to sneak on the island watch your step. Many of the
buildings are rotting and falling apart. After half of a century of
neglect many of them turned into death traps.
Mary Mallon (September 23, 1869- November 11, 1938) or simply Typhoid Mary as she is popularly known. She became famous as an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid disease caused by bacteria Salmonella typhi. Working as a cook for several families she managed to infect as many as 51 people. Three of them died. Health officials eventually transferred her to the North Brother Island on March 27, 1915 to keep public safe and contain the disease. Here she spent the rest of her life until her death. While on the island she worked as a technician in the North Brother island's laboratory. Mary died on November 11, 1938 from pneumonia. Upon her death a autopsy was performed. Coroner discovered live typhoid bacteria in a gallbladder of a unfortunate woman.
North Brother Island was a site of tragedy of ironclad General Slocum. This steamship was chartered on June 15, 1904 by Saint Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Little District of Manhattan. It was an annual ride for families of German immigrants. Over 1400 passengers boarded the ship and it set sail around 9:30am. They were supposed to travel along an East Island. However just thirty minutes into a voyage as they passed East 90th Street a fir broke out in the Lamp Room.
Fire quickly followed through the vessel. The crew of the ship was completely unprepared for the situation. Captain Van Schaick was informed about the fire 10 minutes after it was first discovered. Water hoses and fire extinguishers proved to be defective and didn't work. Some of them simply rotted due to negligence of the crew. It also became impossible to get most of the life boats from the deck of a steam ship. Life jackets were also defective in most cases. Parents of the children discovered in horror that children they tossed overboard dressed in life jackets drowned instead of floating as they expected it. Analysis of the life vests after the tragedy discovered that the material used in its production was of inferior quality. To increase its weight to required mass factory workers at Nonpareil Cork Works added iron to life vests. It became almost impossible to survive the currents of the river, especially if you couldn't swim. In less than an hour 1021 people were killed either on a ship by burning fire or by jumping in the waters of the East River.
North Brother Island and South Brother Island were claimed by
the Dutch West India Company in 1614 and were originally known
by the collective name of De Gesellen, meaning "the companions".
Even after New York came under the control of the British, the
islands remained deserted, above all because of the strong
currents which made landing difficult.
North Brother
Island
The North Island was uninhabited until 1885, when
Riverside Hospital was relocated from Blackwell's Island (now
renamed Roosevelt Island). Riverside Hospital was founded in the
1850s as the primary hospital for the treatment and isolation of
smallpox patients. Its function was later extended to other
infectious diseases, the latest of which was tuberculosis, with
a pavilion opened in 1943 and almost immediately becoming
obsolete.
North Brother Island was the scene of the
sinking of the General Slocum, a steamboat which caught fire on
June 15, 1904. Over 1,000 people died either in the fire on
board the ship or by drowning before the boat ran aground on the
island's shores .
Mary Mallon, also known as Typhoid
Mary, a carrier of typhus who had infected over fifty people
over the years and caused three confirmed deaths, was confined
to the island for over twenty years, from 1915 until her death
in 1938. The hospital closed a few years later.
After
World War II, the island was used to house war veterans
attending New York universities and their families. When the
post-war housing crisis ended, the island was once again
abandoned. In the fifties, a center for the treatment of drug
addicted adolescents was opened, which was supposed to provide
medical assistance, rehabilitation and psychological and
educational support to people with drug problems. Heroin addicts
were confined to the island and kept locked up, in many cases
even against their will. In the early 1960s repeated cases of
corruption of staff members (accused of supplying patients with
drugs) and the high relapse rate among former patients led to
the closure of the facility.
Over the years, the city
administration took into consideration various hypotheses
regarding the destination of the island. Mayor John Lindsay, for
example, proposed to sell it, and Ed Koch to convert it into
homes for the homeless. The idea of using it as an extension of
Rikers Island Penitentiary was also considered.
Currently
North Brother Island is a wildlife sanctuary for herons and
other migratory birds. The island is abandoned and public access
is prohibited. Most of the original hospital buildings are still
standing, but heavily deteriorated and in danger of collapsing,
and are enveloped in dense forest. In 2014, City Councilman Mark
Levine, head of the city's public parks commission, led a
visiting delegation to the island and mooted the possibility of
holding limited, low-impact visits for a small audience. In
October 2016, New York Magazine reported that the city council
commissioned the University of Pennsylvania to study how the
island could be converted into an access-controlled park.
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. 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