Monday, April 27, 2020 – A REPORT FROM NORTH BROTHER ISLAND IN 1892

By admin

MONDAY 

April 27, 2020

RIHS’s 37th Issue of

A REPORT FROM NORTH BROTHER ISLAND IN 1892

REMEMBRANCES OF A SNEAK VISIT  ONTO ROOSEVELT ISLAND

CELEBRATING ISLANDS WEEK
NORTH BROTHER
WARD’S & RANDALL’S
BEDLOE’S
HOFFMAN & SWINBURNE
GOVERNOR’S

 INTRODUCTION

Both North Brother Island and South Brother Island were claimed by the Dutch West India Company in 1614 and were originally named “De Gesellen”, translated as “the companions” in English.

The islands were both originally part of Queens County. On June 8, 1881, North Brother Island was transferred to what was then part of New York County (later to become the Bronx). On April 16, 1964, South Brother Island was also transferred to the Bronx.

The islands had been incorporated into Long Island City in 1870, before the consolidation of New York City in 1898. 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.

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 onboard the ship, or from drowning before the ship beached on the island’s shores.

According to Joseph Mitchell, a reporter for newspapers and 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.

Mary Mallon, also known as Typhoid Mary, was confined to the island for over two decades until she died there in 1938. 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. Staff corruption and cost forced the facility to close in 1963. 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.

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.

Now serving as a sanctuary for herons and other wading shorebirds, 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.
Wikipedia(c)

Aerial View of island with lighthouse in forefront and buildings of Riverside Hospital to the left

Neat and tidy view from above. Only 20 acres of land, 1/7th the size of Blackwell’s Island

Closeup of Hospital Buddings..Riverside Hospital was originally housed in our former Smallpox Hospital

The lighthouse at the southern tip is no longer visible from the river.

Passengers boarding the General Slocum.  Carrying over 1,000 mostly women and children, it caught fire at Hell Gate, north or Blackwell’s Island and finally ran aground on North Brother Island. The island is off the coast of 135 Street in the Bronx.   The patients and staff worked to rescue passengers while many died and their remains were brought to the island. It was the worst single day tragedy until 9/11.

Many walked away with minor sentences the story of the General Slocum was lost to history for many years.  The passengers were working class women and children from the Lower East Side German immigrant community. 

Due to extensive and persistent tracing by a public health physician Mary Mallon was confined to North Brother Island in Quarantine twice.  After being discharged the first time she went back to cooking an infecting others.  This time she was sent to the Island permanently.

Rendering of the Tuberculosis Hospital which was designed by Isadore Rosenfield, the architect of Goldwater Hospital on Welfare Island.

Rounded design  to deflect germs and large open rooms were common beliefs in the treatment of Tuberculosis.

JACOB A. RIIS VISITED
NORTH BROTHER ISLAND
IN 1892. 
THIS IS HIS REPORT FROM AN
ISLAND OF QUARANTINE
FOR
COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE

From our Mailbag:
Guy Ludwig Laudesi recalls

I have leaned, regularly, into your wonderful almanac. Miss Berdy, I have so enjoyed the Schetlin stories . I have thought of places i’ve stood looking at the contemporary color photographs.

I have imagined where Westview sits in comparison to the camps, and farms and ferry docks of yore. and the Storehouse descriptions have awakened a series of memories about the trolley — my mother took me on a ride when I was three!! — and visits to the island in the sixties with my father (who was a dentist attached to the department of hospitals). another recollection triggered by your almanac was my first trip to recently renamed Roosevelt island, alone. this was either in the early summer of 1973 or ’74. I took the “orange bus” from queens plaza along the outer roadway and convinced the driver to stop at the plaza to the “upside down building”. there.

I was met almost immediately by a guard who told me I”didn’t belong”. but we kept talking, and I explained I was thrilled by the island’s re-development, that my aunt kept a scrapbook of the island’s construction progress and how could I just “walk around” down there? The guard relented, walked me down to the 9th floor and stood while we rang, repeatedly, for one of the passenger elevators. I remember the interior of the building very well, mostly because it was both old and clean. even the 1909 dark green interior of the elevator, with its polished brass controls, was swept up and smelled as if someone had gone over it with disinfectant. the elevator operator frightened me a bit but at ground level talked to me.

I recall he said he thought the island would need the storehouse building and that he thought trolleys might come back (but only on the side of the bridge facing the Storehouse). a vivid example of the way the world has changed is revealed by the fact that the two employees of the city whom I encountered just let me set off over a construction site which, in retrospect, was probably quite hazardous.

It must have been a Saturday because i do not recall a lot of activity — although there were workers, to whom I  nodded and they nodded back. by the upside down building there was little construction, but walking north past what appeared to be an occupied nurse’s residence — contractor offices?? 

Main Street was discernible and all of the buildings footprints were in place. I remember thinking there was certain randomness to what was going on: one section of Eastwood was an actual building and next to it was a foundation.

Rivercross was the “most done” of everything I saw, and I recollect thinking, if I kept walking north I’d come to the drawbridge to Queens. I almost got there – exiting the “heavy” construction zone in the process – when, out of no where, a very angry policeman yelled at me from what seemed like an alley: “young man!!” I jumped and turned toward him. “we’ve been looking for you”. apparently the ‘guards’ thought better of just letting me roam off, called the local police and they threw out the dragnet. this officer, who turned out to be very understanding, explained that “I couldn’t be allowed to just walk around and fall in a hole”. he wanted to know where I  lived, where I went to school and he wanted me off the island immediately. “should I go back to the upside down building?”, I asked. “no, wait right here” – we were near the drawbridge – “and a bus will take you into queens” and then, rather nicely, he said, “don’t let me catch you back down there”, pointed toward the Main Street construction zone. the bus came.

I went my father’s office in Jackson Heights. He did not seem very annoyed at my adventure – but I made sure to “come clean” lest the police called him! (what did i know? I was a quite naive teenager.)

EDITORIAL

When I  chose to write about North Brother Island I remembered that I had copy of an article from Cosmopolitan Magazine about the island. No, not the current Cosmo, but a literary journal of 1892.
On-line I found this reprint of it from a university library via Google.

The story by the famous photographer Jacob Riis is a tender recounting of those who are taken to this island for care and treatment.

Most survive and leave the island, treated by staff who live there their entire careers.

I got a e-mail the the other day from Guy Ludwig, who is encamped in the wilds of Vermont for the duration. He tells of his early visit sneaking onto the not yet completed island.  

It is a dreary day and even Beano the cat has no interest in stirring.

I got an artwork from my friend Henry yesterday for my birthday.

Judith Berdy
212-688-4836
917-744-3721
jbird134@aol.com

Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff