THIS ARTICLE IS A FEW YEARS OLD BUT A GOOD PRIMER ON EARLY ROOSEVELT ISLAND DEVELOPMENT.
Roosevelt Island is a 2.5-mile long sliver of land in the middle of the East River between Midtown Manhattan and Queens totaling 147 acres. The island was first known as Blackwell’s Island, named after the Blackwell family who farmed the land before selling it to the city in 1825 when it was then used for various public facilities over the next century; a penitentiary, smallpox hospital, cemetery, and insane asylum.
The city would drastically transform Roosevelt Island in the mid-20th century, following the construction of the Queensboro Bridge, which opened in 1909 and passed over the island without providing access to it. In 1921 the island was renamed Welfare Island after the public hospital located on the southern end. Automobile and trolley transportation was first introduced with the opening of a vehicular elevator from the Queensboro Bridge in 1930. Over the next three decades, two large hospitals opened and in 1955 the Welfare Island Bridge was constructed, connecting the island with Queens and opening it up to more vehicular traffic.
In the 1960s planners and politicians started eyeing Welfare Island for a mixed-use masterplan. Urban renewal projects were transforming neighborhoods across the city and Welfare Island’s close proximity to Midtown and public designation made it a prime candidate for development. In 1961 shopping mall pioneer Victor Gruen proposed constructing a platform 22-feet above the island for a residential community of 70,000 people with schools, stores, public facilities, and housing, all connected by air-conditioned malls. The plan, which would have renamed Welfare Island, East Island was never realized, partly because of competing proposals to turn the island into a park and because the city was wary of giving such a large tract of land to one developer. East Island was just the first of many proposals that were considered during this period, none of which gained significant political favorability. One far-fetched proposal included digging up bodies in Queens and Brooklyn cemeteries and reburying them on the Island to free up space in the two Boroughs. Other ideas included linking the island to Midtown via landfill and multiple causeways, funneling the East River and shipping traffic through a narrow canal. The most significant development was the decision to connect the island to the subway system, with a station just north of the Queensboro Bridge in 1963.
VICTOR GRUEN’S EAST ISLANDUNDERGROUND TRANSPORTATION
In 1966 Mayor Lindsay officially announced the city’s intention to develop the island with the first step of demolishing forty five condemned hospital structures. In 1969 the newly established New York State Urban Development Corporation (UDC) issued a 141-page report analyzing the different options for the island. They proceeded to sign a 99-year lease for the land and brought in architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee to design an ambitious masterplan with housing for 20,000 new residents. Johnson and Burgee called for a mixed-income, automobile-free community planned around landscaped plazas and promenades utilizing the picturesque river and skyline views. While the development would have commercial and civic buildings – a public school, daycare facility, parking garage, office space and a hotel – the large majority of space would be used for apartment buildings of varying shapes and sizes. The area was split into two “towns,” Northtown and Southtown, of which there were nine zones, five parks, and four building lots. This was done to preserve the vistas from the island and to avoid long slab-like developments running the length of the island, as seen in the Gruen Plan. The only street, Main Street, would run north-south reserved only for emergency vehicles, minibuses, bicycles and necessary deliveries and would be the location of commercial and public facilities. Instead of cross streets, pedestrian walkways would bisect the island between buildings. Certain existing island buildings such as Blackwell House and the Lunatic Asylum would be landmarked and preserved. The masterplan was approved in October 1969 and the UDC immediately lept into action, hiring architects for the housing, garage, commercial facilities, infrastructure, and parks.
Johnson & Burgee’s Roosevelt Island masterplan. Credit: The island nobody knows, 1968. View the full report here.
In 1973 as construction was underway Mayor Lindsay renamed Welfare Island Franklin D. Roosevelt Island, unveiling plans for a monument and park at the southern end of the island named “Four Freedoms Foundation Monument to President Roosevelt.” Designed by Louis Kahn, the monument was a 780-foot-long triangular site created by landfill from the new subway tunnel, strategically positioned directly across the river from the United Nations headquarters in Midtown. Four Freedoms would face delays and not open until 2012. The 63rd street subway tunnel connecting Roosevelt Island to the system would not open until 1989.
The first phase of construction commenced in the summer of 1971 with 2,138 units of housing for 5,000 residents in four apartment buildings, along with streets, sewers and commercial space. Kallmann & McKinnel were hired to design Motorgate, a parking garage with a firehouse, post office, full-sized supermarket and retail. The housing developments Rivercross Apartments and Island House, designed by John Johansen with Ashok M. Bhavnani were completed in 1975. Johansen & Bhavnani’s Rivercross and Island House buildings were reinforced concrete structures clad in cement-asbestos panels, stepped up from the Manhattan side of the East River, housing 850 middle- and upper-income families. Across Main Street was Sert, Jackson & Associates’ Eastwood and Westview Apartments, a Mitchell-Lama development, which housed lower- and middle-income families on a six-acre site that was completed a year after Rivercross and Island House.
Sert was one of Europe’s leading modernists and a highly influential figure in post-war modernism, both in architecture and planning. Before coming to the U.S., Sert worked under Corbusier and co-founded the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM). As Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design during the 1950s and 60s, Sert helped to spread the styles and ideas of Corbusier, Team X, and European Late-Modernism across the Northeastern U.S. Critics claim that his work was too reliant upon Corbusier or that he represented disproven orthodoxies of modernist ideology, but his work on Roosevelt Island, like his projects in Cambridge, deliver a type of late modernist Architecture, that like Corbusier, bridges the worlds of orthodox CIAM theoretical modernism with an avant-garde artistic sensibility. This varies from the formalist approach that we know in the U.S. thanks to Rudolph, Johnson, SOM, Stone, and Saarinen.
EASTWOOD AND RIVERCROSS CONSTRUCTION
EASTWOOD ROOSEVELT LANDINGS
Date: 1976 Architect: Sert, Jackson & Associates Address: 510 – 580 Main Street, Roosevelt Island Use: Residential
Sert’s apartment buildings Eastwood and Westview are two of the most interesting and innovative housing developments of the period. At 1,003 units, Eastwood is the largest residential complex on the island made up of ten connected buildings, stepped back from the water, forming three courtyards, each containing their own community facility; a school, senior center, and outdoor amphitheater. The courtyards are enclosed on all four sides, walled off from the waterfront except for a few open-air passageways that access a promenade along the river. Sert positioned the lowest slabs along the water, opening up the panoramic views from the rising towers, similar to 1199 Plaza across the East River in Manhattan. This was a compromise from Johnson’s original master plan that called for the courtyards to open up to the waterfront, unobstructed. Johnson’s masterplan pressed the need for a human scale, with buildings not exceeding ten stories, however, the UDC analysis determined the heights would need to increase to up to 22 stories to meet the required density. Sert and Johansen’s buildings were able to retain Johnson’s human scale by gradually stepping the 22 story east-west sections back from the river, preserving the water views and capping the longer north-south portions that followed Main Street to seven stories, creating a concrete canyon along the narrow street. Sections of the building along the river promenade were raised to create an arcade, along with openings into the courtyards.
Along Main Street, the buildings form a pedestrian arcade, raised above the sidewalk by smooth poured concrete columns. The facade is comprised of precast board-formed striated concrete panels, resembling Paul Rudolph’s iconic corduroy texture. Sert left the mortar lines on the facade visible, giving the panels a tiled pattern. The elevator shafts provided visual anchors for the buildings – a smooth, lighter concrete with small windows illustrating the skip-stop elevators that stopped only every third floor.
MOTORGATE
Date: 1974 Architect: Kallmann & McKinnel Address: 688 Main St, Roosevelt Island Use: Parking Garage
Roosevelt Island’s utopian vision was centered around the Motorgate parking garage. Designed by Boston City Hall architects Kallman & McKinnel, the garage was intended to absorb the load of automobile traffic to the island, creating New York City’s only car-free neighborhood. With capacity for 1,000 cars, (then increased to 2,600) Motorgate was established to hold vehicles for all island residents, their visitors and employees of Roosevelt Island institutions and businesses. Johnson and Burgee’s masterplan proposed restricting all traffic on the island with the exception of deliveries, construction trucks, ambulances and personal emergencies. Motorgate was constructed at the base of the Roosevelt Island Bridge, the sole vehicular connection to the island, funneling all traffic into the garage ensuring the 38-foot-wide Main Street would be restricted to pedestrians. In 1975 a pneumatic trash collection system was installed to deliver all waste to a central collection point, making garbage trucks obsolete. The concrete-framed six-story structure was an adaptation of the architect’s work on Boston’s City Hall (1968) with influences from Paul Rudolph’s Temple Street Parking Garage in New Haven.
The UDC had hoped to create a livable neighborhood in the city that could compete with the growing suburbia, allowing residents open space and a parking spot, while still having a walkable community with close proximity to Midtown Manhattan.
On the lower level, the garage incorporated a post office and grocery store, helping to open it up to the surrounding urban fabric and making it more inviting to pedestrians. These commercial additions also solidified the site as the civic center of the new planned community
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Recently the RIHS and RIOC Youth Center Celebrated the Island History with Landmark History Quest Thanks to Ana Medina & Youth Center staff or a great day and their creative artwork.
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Chrysler Building in 1932. Photo by Samuel H. Gottscho, in public domain
At the close of Prohibition, Seagram’s from Canada was well-positioned to export its spirits to the United States. In fact, during Prohibition, the Bronfman family which owned Seagram’s was stockpiling alcohol to be ready when America went wet again. By 1933, when the 18th Amendment was repealed, Seagram’s owned the “largest private stock of aged whisky” in the world. Even during Prohibition, Seagram’s was selling liquor to the United States, first directly to bootleggers and then when export was banned in Canada, the company shipped stock to the French island territory of Saint Pierre and Miquelon near Newfoundland and smuggled it to the States.
With his smart marketing schemes, Samuel Bronfman nearly singlehandedly rebranded whiskey from the domain of bootleggers to that of the refined class. A 1934 Seagram’s advertising campaign had the tagline, “We who make whiskey say: drink moderately.” Lisa Jacobsen writes, in an article for the journal Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, “If alcohol producers were to make repeal success, they would not only have to teach consumers what commercial-grade alcohol should taste like, smell like, look like, and feel like going down, but they would also have to teach Americans the etiquette (and imperative) of responsible drinking. Alcohol producers in essence had to cultivate new kinds of consumer knowledge to advance the cultural and political legitimacy of their still morally suspect industry and products.” In essence, the marketing efforts associated alcohol “moderation with masculine virtue, middle-class respectability,” says Jacobsen, values which persist today.
Chrysler Building in 1932. Photo by Samuel H. Gottscho, in public domain
As such, Seagram’s rented a floor high up in the Chrysler Building in Manhattan, the icon of modernity and respectability as skyscrapers went at the time, as part of their efforts to take over the American alcohol market. The company hired architect Morris Lapidus to create an office with a private executive bar. In his early career, Lapidus had worked for Warren and Wetmore, the architectural firm that designed Grand Central Terminal, and later became a retail design expert while working for Ross-Frankel. Lapidus may be most famous for his later career work defining the hotels in Miami, designing The Fountainbleu Hotel (which had a starring role in the most recent season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), and the Eden Roc Hotel.
But 1933 was the year Lapidus was hired by the Seagram Company. The office was designed in an “exuberant, bright and shiny deco-moderne style” that defined Seagram’s embrace of modern architecture as a form of civic duty,” writes Benjamin Flowers in Skyscraper>The Politics and Power of Building New York City in the Twentieth Century.
The Executive Bar at the Seagram’s office in the Chrysler Building in 1939. Photo by Otto Schlesinger from Library of Congress.
The design of the Executive Bar clearly takes cues from Lapidus’ retail design aesthetic, with curved lines throughout in the ceiling, along the bar, and following the leather banquettes. In the book Cafes and Bars: The Architecture of Public Display the bar is described as a “showroom of and for [Seagram’s] own products: bottles of alcohol” displayed in round display holes and notes that instead of being public facing, the bar was “hidden away in the heart of a skyscraper.” According to a 1956 report in Forbes, reporters would be “summoned” there for news and would sample the latest in the extensive range of Seagram’s products.
A very detailed description of the space in Cafes and Bars offers additional detail that accompanies the photographs by Otto Schlesinger (available at the Library of Congress). The walls, the report describes, “are covered in panels of bleached rift-sawn oak and East Indian rosewood and North American plywood, combined with brown rubber tiles for the floor and leather for settees along the wall…the murals above the banquettes by Stuyvesant van Veen depict the production and tasting of spirits…” Fluorescent lighting, curved of course, illuminated the bar. A mirror behind the bar expands the space and duplicates the alcohol display on the back wall as well as the bottles at the bar.
The Seagram company would eventually build its own skyscraper in New York City 1958, the Seagram Building on Park Avenue designed by Mies van der Rohe with interiors by Philip Johnson. The glass curtain-wall building would host the iconic Four Seasons Restaurant, the premiere destination for power lunches in New York City and the building would become a landmark in its own right.
The Executive Bar in the Chrysler Building is long gone, much like the other Art Deco and Art Moderne spots in the building like the auto showroom on the ground floor and the Cloud Club at the top. But to get a sense of the powerhouse that Seagram’s has been, it controlled the distribution (and in some cases also the production) of brands like Dewar’s, Captain Morgan, Chivas Regal, Crown Royal, Seagram’s V.O., Tropicana, Absolut Vodka, and more.
By the 1950s, the company was diversifying and going into oil and coal, and in the 1980s as a result of acquisitions, Seagram’s became the largest shareholder of DuPont, the chemical company. In the 1990s, Seagram’s got into the entertainment business, investing in Time Warner and MCA (which includes Universal Studios). In 2000, Seagram’s merged with Vivendi, although the new French company soon sold off the liquor business to Pernod Ricard and Diageo. Over time the Bronfman family sold their shares of Vivendi ending the family’s long history with Seagram’s from Prohibition to the 21st century.
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CONGRATULATIONS TO FRANCINE BENJAMIN FOR BEING AWARDED THE AGNES ABRAHAM AWARD FOR HER WORK AS THE CO-CHAIR OF THE RESIDENT COUNCIL AT COLER
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Michelle is the founder of Untapped New York and the author of The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland, Secret Brooklyn, Secret New York, and Broadway. michelleyoungwriter.com
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In colonial times, almost all of Manhattan was farmland. These farms—with hundreds of acres of vegetables, fruit orchards, and livestock, anchored by a clapboard farmhouse—were slowly given over to the development of the asphalt city.
One unusual farm is considered the last holdout. The Benedetto Farm (sometimes spelled Benedeto), founded by an Italian immigrant family in Inwood, gets that honor, with the last tilling of the soil around 1940.
But the story of the Benedetto Farm doesn’t follow the narrative of a longtime farm family selling their land and developing it themselves, or getting squeezed out by rapacious speculators amid the northward march of urbanization.
For starters, the Benedetto Farm only began operating in 1924. Vincenzo Benedetto apparently wasn’t making enough money from his job delivering ice to apartment buildings from a horse-drawn wagon.
So Vincenzo and his wife, Mary, with help from their nine children, became farmers. For $30 a month they rented a two-acre parcel between Broadway, Tenth Avenue, 213th, and 214th Street, states Fran Leadon, author of Broadway: A History of New York City in Thirteen Miles.“They grew tomatoes, corn, string beans, carrots, beets, broccoli, radishes, and lettuce; peaches, cherries, pears, pumpkins, and squash; and raised chickens that laid both brown and white eggs priced at fifteen cents a dozen,” wrote Leadon.The crops and eggs were sold at a farmstand, recalled the youngest Benedetto daughter in a 1987 oral history referenced in a 2009 post on myinwood.net.
“It wasn’t a very big farm—only a city block,” stated Josephene Benedetto. “For me it was just a place to live. We moved there in 1924, when I was three. My father was an ice man until the Frigidaires came in and that went kaput.”
The family lived in a two-story brick house beneath the IRT elevated. “Our house didn’t have electricity or gas or anything,” said Josephene. “We had to bring everything in.”
Keep in mind that by the 1920s, much of Inwood had been transformed into concrete blocks of modern apartment houses and commercial spaces.
That made the Benedetto Farm something of an anomaly, a curiosity often featured in newspapers and magazines—which angered Vincenzo.
“Vincenzo di Benedetto, who enjoys a fame of sorts because he is the only farmer left in Manhattan, has his troubles,” reported one newspaper. “One is publicity. Contrary to the average run of Manhattanites, he doesn’t care for that. Nevertheless, reporters are always coming around and wasting his time by asking him questions.”
Annoying reporters were one thing. The Depression, however, put a major dent in profits. In 1930, Mary told Time that “things have not been very good for the farmer this year.”
Rumors started that the owner of the property was planning to sell. Reporters came around asking questions about the farm’s demise. “I don’t know anything about it,” Vincenzo barked to the New York Times in 1936.
“The newspapers always publish a lot of lies about me. Now we’re going to bed. You better get out.”
By 1940, “Vincenzo and Mary had sublet part of their farm to a used car lot and converted another section into a parking lot, leaving only one-third of the block for farming,” wrote Leadon. “That year, the farm sold only about $50 worth of produce.”
In 1943, Vincenzo died at age 58. The land was sold in 1954, stated Leadon. In place of the corn and pumpkins and chickens rose a New York Telephone Company building that still exists today—repurposed for a variety of smaller businesses.
“Let the last farm in Manhattan vanish under steel and brick,” eulogized the Brooklyn Eagle. “This is the city.”
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The first Jewish congregation in the United States, Shearith Israel, was established in Lower Manhattan in 1654 by 23 Sephardic Jews who fled Brazil when it was conquered by the Portuguese (who demanded that Jews convert to Christianity). The new graphic novel “Remnants,” by Julian Voloj, details the story.
This fledgling Jewish community eventually consecrated the Mill Street Synagogue, located on what is now South William Street. They called their new temple “Shearith Israel,” which translates literally as, “remnant of Israel.” It was the first Jewish house of worship in North America. Although that pioneering temple has long since vanished, the Shearith Israel congregation endures, and is now headquartered at Central Park West and 70th Street.
In Lower Manhattan, a different remnant remains: the Chatham Square Cemetery. In 1682, Shearith Israel built this cemetery, which still occupies its original site at 55 St. James Place (near Worth Street). It was a serendipitous walk by this burying ground—the second oldest in Manhattan, behind only that of Trinity Church—that inspired Mr. Voloj to write “Remnants.”
Mr. Voloj (who collaborated with artist Ardre Diniz on “Remnants”) grew up in Germany with two Colombian parents. He became a photographer, and, in New York, worked on a series on Jewish diversity. “I grew up in a small Jewish community in my hometown,” he said. “Coming to America was so different. I grew up in a minority, the last remnant of a once thriving culture. I came to New York in the early 2000s, when there was lots going on with exploring Jewish identity. I realized when people think of Jewish identity, they think of classic Ashkenazi identity,” a reference to Jews originating in Central and Eastern Europe, “but there’s so much more to Jewish identity.”
America’s first Jews were Sephardic (meaning they were descended from the Jewish community on the Iberian Peninsula), he noted. “Their ancestors were persecuted in Portugal and they created the first synagogue in Brazil, but had to flee when the Portuguese recaptured Brazil. For a long time, American Jewry was Sephardic, not Ashkenazi.”
This map from 1900 shows the location of the Mill Street Synagogue by superimposing tracings of earlier maps from the 1700s and 1800s with what was then a contemporary street grid.
“The story of the 23 Jews is the origin of American Jewry,” he continued. “It’s an amazing story that they came in 1654. For American Jews, America was the promised land. For many years, Jews were excluded from industries and they created their own. This is how the comic book industry was created. The story also shows how everything changes—there were Sephardic Jews from 1654 onwards, then the German Jews who came after the failed revolution of 1848, then Eastern Europeans, then Holocaust survivors, then Syrians and Ethiopians. Today it is much more diverse because many different groups have come and it shows how identity always changes.”
Reflecting on the community that immigrants find in America and how his research for ‘Remnants’ has shaped his perspective, Mr. Voloj said, “I am an immigrant myself. I didn’t have the struggles other had coming here, but I was born to Colombian immigrants and saw that my dad, who was not able to learn the language perfectly in his lifetime, was discriminated against. I feel sympathetic to the struggle of immigrants. The landscape is becoming more xenophobic and anti-immigrant. ‘Remnants’ is an important tale, mainly directed towards younger readers but still a universal tale, of what it means to become an American.”
The author also believes the graphic novel form is uniquely suited for making history accessible to new generations of readers. “The general attention span is going down because we are on our mobile phones,” he said. “Graphic novels are a nice middle way, because it’s a book form, but it allows you to package complex topics.”
Mr. Voloj’s next project will recount the story of Julius Hirsch, the first Jewish player on Germany’s national soccer team. “In the 1910s, he was a huge star,” the author said. “He assumed that because he was such a beloved star, the Nazis would not kill him, so he ended up not fleeing and he was murdered in Auschwitz.” Produced in partnership with the German Soccer Federation, the new graphic novel was previewed on July 7 at the German House of Soccer, a pop-up fan zone in Chelsea, as part of New York’s World Cup festivities.
Grace Glukhov
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A BRIGHT NEW SIGN FOR COLER
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The Forgotten Black Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis in NYC
Untapped New York
Tuesday, July 14, 2026
Issue # 1713
In 1929, Sea View Hospital was in crisis. The now-partially abandoned Staten Island medical facility was experiencing a mass exodus of white nurses while simultaneously handling an overwhelming amount of tuberculosis patients. To remedy the situation, New York City officials began recruiting Black female nurses from the South, offering freedom from the oppression of Jim Crow and the benefits of good pay, education, housing, and employment. The stories of these trailblazing nurses have gone largely untold for nearly a century, but now, author Maria Smilios sheds light on their achievements in her new book TheBlack Angels: The Untold Story ofthe Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis.
In the early half of the 20th century, tuberculosis killed over 5.6 million Americans. The disease was especially devastating to cities like New York, where it ran rampant through crowded tenement houses and spread rapidly among poor communities. Those suffering from the disease were sent to various healthcare facilities around the edge of the city in hopes of containing the spread and giving patients clean, fresh air.
Sea View Hospital opened in 1913 and was comprised of thirty-seven buildings. The sprawling complex sat at the second-highest point on Staten Island, once the site of a grand hilltop estate called “Ocean View.” By the 1920s, when the 2,000-bed hospital was running out of nurses, it was called a “pest house” and a place where “no one left alive.” The Black Angels changed that.
Over the course of twenty years, women like Edna Sutton, Missouria Louvinia Meadows-Walker, Clemmie Philips, Janie Shirley, and Virginia Allen, bravely marched to the front lines of the epidemic and cared for patients who others turned their backs on. Not only did these women work grueling hours day in and day out and put themselves at risk to care for New York’s sick, but they did so while also fighting racism and discrimination.
Photo Courtesy of NYCHHC Sea View Archives
At the time, most of New York City’s more than two dozen municipal hospitals discriminated against Black nurses in some way, whether that meant they simply were not allowed to be hired or there were quotas that limited the number of Black nurses who could be employed. While the medical breakthroughs of white, male doctors and researchers at Sea View who found a cure for tuberculosis have long been celebrated worldwide, the contributions of the Black nurses – who were among the first to administer the groundbreaking drug, isoniazid – have largely been kept alive in the memories of their families, friends, and local communities.
Photo Courtesy of James Williams
Using first-hand interviews and never-before-accessed archives, Smilios brings the stories of the Black Angels to center stage, highlighting how their efforts helped to desegregate the New York City hospital system, stop discriminatory practices in medical education and medical research, and ultimately save countless lives. Learn more about The Black Angelsfrom the author in our virtual talk, and get your own copy of The Black Angels, out now!
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ENJOYING A SHOWER AT BLACKWELL PARK
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If you were a New Yorker in the 19th century and found yourself to be poor, incurably sick, homeless, or convicted of a crime, you might have been herded into a ferry and confined to one of the “islands of the undesirables” in the East River.
In the colonial era, these islands were privately owned spits of land used for farming, foraging, or as pasture for grazing animals. Throughout the 19th century, many became city property.
In the eyes of officials at the Department of Public Charities and Correction, these islands were ideal places to house—some would say warehouse—adults and children who were deemed to require specialized care or oversight.
Blackwell’s Island, today’s Roosevelt Island, was the island with the largest population, thanks to its infamous “Lunatic Asylum” as well as a penitentiary, almshouse, smallpox hospital, and other facilities.
North Brother Island was home to a quarantine hospital for people with incurable yet contagious diseases like typhoid and tuberculosis. (Typhoid Mary was forced to spend the last three decades of her life here.)
Randalls Island, meanwhile, hosted the House of Refuge for juvenile offenders, the Foundling Hospital that cared for the many babies abandoned in alleys and ash barrels, and an infamous facility known as the “Idiot Asylum.”
The story of the Idiot Asylum—”idiot” being the medical definition at the time for someone with an intellectual disability—has often been overshadowed by reports of the decrepit conditions of the Lunatic Asylum and Almshouse.
But one unnamed reporter at the New-York Tribune decided to pay the Idiot Asylum a visit. His writeup wasn’t the first telling of what life was like in “the walls of the forlorn houses,” as he put it.
With the stark title “An Island Full of Idiots,” however, and published on New Year’s Day in 1888, it might be the most affecting. His account is sad, strange, and heartbreaking.
“From the great cozy city, full of inspiring life, you are rowed across the East River to this desolation by a little, old, silent boatman,” the reporter wrote as he began his journey. “Then, as your feet crunch the frozen snow, you are aware of an oppressive loneliness.”
“And yet you are not alone. A sound of rhythmical scraping attracts your gaze, and it falls on a gang of men shoveling snow.”
“They are dressed alike in clothes striped with black and white. They exchange no words. A man in official uniform sharply watches their compulsory toil. Looking at them you feel lonelier than ever.”
The reporter goes on to describe the residents he sees inside as “members of the irresponsible classes” and “imbecile men and women, boys and girls, who would otherwise desolately drift through life to a miserable death.”
The Idiot Asylum featured a school. The staff taught higher-functioning residents to read, write, and “do a little figuring, so well as to warrant their return to the outside world, in which they will make better members of society than a good many folks who have, and others who think they have, all their wits about them.”
Others were taught simple skills like making mats. “Many of the teachable class make a progress toward intelligent usefulness which is astonishing and speaks volumes for the patient, unwearying care and skill of their instructors.”
Through a doorway he sees a group of residents singing and exercising. “The song shapes itself into a rough outline of some popular air. In a big bare room over a score of eccentric specimens of humanity are stomping around in an endless march.”
As he walks through the asylum, he encounters female residents. “Women in mature life join hands to play ‘Jingo-Ring’ and sing “Little Sally Waters’ with the glee of schoolgirls.”
Some of the residents he describes sound more like they fit the definition of autism, which was not yet an official diagnosis.
“There is also a large number of the women, as well as a few of the men, in whom an idiosyncracy, greatly developed, constitutes their mental weakness. Watch a group of them together, and you will see each oblivious to the others.”
“Some rock themselves to and fro all day long. One rather pretty girl constantly brushes her long hair back from her brow. Some repeat snatches of merry tunes with no mirth in them. Some are over overwhelmingly vain, other overwhelmed in melancholy.” How the 1888 article was received isn’t known. But four decades later, the Idiot Asylum was closed and demolished, along with Randalls Island’s other 19th century institutions. (The Manhattan Psychiatric Center, a hospital built in the 1950s, remains.) Oversight of the island was transferred to NYC Parks in 1933 under the supervision of Robert Moses. In the ensuing decades, the island became a recreational space with ballfields and a sports stadium, now know as Icahn stadium.
In the 1960s, the channel separating Randalls and Wards Islands was filled in. Now, Randalls and Wards Island constitutes one land mass reachable by the Triborough (Robert F. Kennedy) Bridge and a footbridge at 103rd Street.
Newspaper reporters in the Gilded Age visited and wrote what they saw. But I wonder if any of the inmates at the Idiot Asylum ever recorded the details of their experience—what they learned, how they spent their days, if they ever returned to their families in Manhattan.
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A Revolutionary War Sugar House Prison Window in Downtown Manhattan
Friday, July 10, 2026
Untapped New York
ISSUE # 1713
An overlooked monument to the victims of British imprisonment stands near one of NYC’s most iconic landmarks.Every day, New Yorkers pass a relic of the Revolutionary War without giving it a second glance. On Duane Street, embedded a wall near the NYPD Headquarters and Brooklyn Bridge–City Hall/Chambers Street subway station, steps away from the Manhattan Municipal Building, there is window from a sugar warehouse that dates back to 1763. The window is a vestige of the Rhinelander (originally Cuyler) Sugar House, which some believe was used as a prison during the British occupation of New York from 1776 to 1783.
There is some controversy over this widely accepted story though. In his book Forgotten Patriots, Brooklyn College professor Edwin G. Burrows found evidence that Cuyler, the owner of the refinery, “was a Tory, and his refinery appears to have continued to operate during the occupation.” If Burrows is correct, the plaque here joins the long list of incorrect historical plaques in New York City.
Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York, 1857, via Internet Archive
Regardless, the memorial stands testament to the brutality suffered by American revolutionary prisoners at the hands of the British during the war. The more infamous Livingston sugar house on Liberty Street housed up to 500 prisoners, according to this harrowing first-person account by Levi Howard, printed in The New York Times in 1852. More than twice the number of deaths occurred in sugar houses and on prison ships than on the battlefield during the American Revolution. The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in Fort Greene Park is perhaps the most famous memorial to these victims.
Grant Thorburn, a Scottish immigrant, lamented upon the demolition of the Liberty Street Sugar House in 1840 that “it is probable that in the year two thousand and twenty-one there will not be found a man in New-York who can point out the site whereon stood a prison whose history is so feelingly connected with our revolutionary traditions.” [from Forgotten Patriots]
After the war, the Rhinelander Sugar House fell into disrepair and people believed it to be haunted. The Rhinelander Building replaced the sugar house in 1892, until it was demolished in 1968 to become what is now the NYPD headquarters site. The window was left intact both times for preservation, offering New Yorkers a remnant of the Revolutionary War.
Interestingly, another window from the Rhinelander Sugar House was relocated to Van Cortlandt Park where it currently stands as a memorial. The Van Cortlandt sugar house, which was demolished in 1852, is also believed to have been used as a prison. Columns from the Rhinelander Building stand in a public area on Madison Street.
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UNTAPPED NEW YORK
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
One of Manhattan’s busiest and most iconic corridors has been redesigned into a fabulous new pedestrian space. The Fifth Avenue Association, in partnership with the NYC Department of Transportation and landscape architecture firm Field Operations, has officially unveiled a vibrant 7,500-square-foot pedestrian plaza at Grand Army Plaza South. Located right near the entrance to Central Park and the historic Plaza Hotel, this completely revitalized space transforms what was once a congested traffic lane into a world-class public sanctuary.
Despite seeing millions of shoppers, tourists and commuters every year, this stretch of Fifth Avenue has historically lacked places for people to actually slow down. The new plaza completely changes the game, offering custom tables, chairs and benches that comfortably seat up to 64 people. Framed by lush, rotating seasonal planters that will bloom year-round, the formerly chaotic zone is now a scenic spot for a rest.
This public-private transformation serves as a stunning preview of the “Future of Fifth” initiative—the first large-scale redesign in the avenue’s 200-year history. This massive upcoming redevelopment plans to permanently transform the corridor from Bryant Park to Central Park by widening sidewalks, adding lush greenery and prioritizing a pedestrian-first experience. It follows the recent reveal of a major renovation of Grand Army Plaza South, including a restoration of the Pulitzer Fountain.
While the Angelina Paris pop-up is a summer treat, the beautiful public seating and vibrant planters are here to stay year-round. So next time you’re hustling down Fifth Avenue, set aside some time to take a break and marvel at the transformation.
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TIME OUT NEW YORK
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Singer Building (middle) with West Street Building (right) from the Hudson, 1908.
Our favorite NYC skyscraper, the Woolworth Building has two younger siblings, the Broadway Chambers Building (1900), and 90 West Street (1907). Both buildings were designed by Woolworth Building architect Cass Gilbert, but Woolworth’s gothic influence is truly seen in 90 West, which is clad head to toe in ornamental terra cotta.
The New York Times described the building when it was first proposed, “It is to be twenty-three stories high and finished on the uppermost stories in beautiful colored terra cotta, harmonizing with the copper sheathed mansard roof. Its unobstructed frontage on the river will make it one of the landmarks to those who use the North River ferries.”
Blocks away from the office buildings on Broadway, the West Street building was located on the banks of the Hudson directly across the street from the docks to serve the adjacent shipping and railway industries. Gilbert and structural engineer Gunvald Aus designed the building to be completely fireproof using state of the art methods including double layer terra cotta on the facade making it more than a foot thick. Steel columns and stairwells were encased in thick tiles and each floor was separated by foot-thick arched tiles to prevent the spread of fire with granite at the base as wide as six feet. After completing the West Street building in 1907 Gilbert would go on to design the Woolworth Building, the tallest skyscraper the world when it opened in 1913.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ In the 1970s the building was saved from demolition, with the World Trade Center urban renewal border stopping across the street from the terra-cotta tower. In the shadow of the 110-story Twin Towers, the West Street Building was no longer on the banks of the Hudson; the newly created Battery Park City would add 92 acres of landfill to the west of the ornamental skyscraper.
On 9/11 the building suffered severe damaged and burned for three days. Yet, the building’s fireproofing saved it from complete devastation leaving much of the structure intact. Following 9/11 the skyscraper was restored, with the Boston Terra Cotta Company fabricating 7,853 new pieces of terra-cotta and over 100 replacement gargoyles and grotesques including seven contemporary faces – the building’s owners, contractors, and project manager. 75 percent of the north facade’s granite would be replaced during the restoration. During this time the building was converted from offices to house 410 rental apartments.
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National Constitution Center National Archives *Both websites have extensive information on this letter
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
On August 21, 1790, President George Washington composed a letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, and to its leader, Moses Seixas. Seixas had written a letter to Washington four days earlier. In this letter, Seixas described the benefits that his community received under the new Constitution and expressed his “deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty” for “a Government . . . erected by the Majesty of the People,” committed to the “liberty of conscience,” and “deeming every one, of whatever Nation, tongue, or language equal parts of the great governmental Machine.” Washington responded with a brief but powerful letter, expressing America’s enduring commitment to the principle of tolerance and the freedom of conscience.
Gentlemen.
While I receive, with much satisfaction, your Address replete with expressions of affection and esteem; I rejoice in the opportunity of assuring you, that I shall always retain a grateful remembrance of the cordial welcome I experienced in my visit to Newport, from all classes of Citizens.
The reflection on the days of difficulty and danger which are past is rendered the more sweet, from a consciousness that they are succeeded by days of uncommon prosperity and security. If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good Government, to become a great and a happy people.
The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my Administration, and fervent wishes for my felicity. May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.
Go: Washington
CREDITS National Constitution Center National Archives *Both websites have extensive information on this letter
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
