Monday, March 3, 2025 – SEE HOW CLOSE RIKERS ISLAND IS TO LA GUARDIA AIRPORT
A passenger jet crashes on
Rikers Island
in the 1950s, and
dozens of inmates assist survivors
MONDAY, MARCH 3, 2025
ISSUE #1409
Ephemeral New York
Imagine if a plane took off from LaGuardia Airport on a stormy night and crashed in a snow-covered stretch of Rikers Island. Considering this island jail complex’s reputation for violence and chaos, it’s doubtful that inmates would be allowed to aid survivors.
But that’s exactly what happened when a passenger jet carrying 101 people departed LaGuardia in February 1957. It’s an incredible story of tragedy and heroism that’s hard to imagine in the New York City of today.
Before the details of the crash, here’s a primer on the backstory of Rikers Island. For its first century and a half after Dutch colonization, this spit of land in the East River was owned by the Rycken family, who lived on a farm in modern-day Astoria.
What did the Rikers, as they eventually renamed themselves, do with this 87-acre island? Aside from farming the land early on, not much. (Above, the East River from Rikers Island, date unknown)
During the 19th century, sleigh riding parties from Flushing crossed the ice on the frozen river to the island, and ships coming in from New England dropped anchor there. With the Civil War raging in the early 1860s, Rikers was used as a training ground for Union soldiers.
In 1884, the city bought Rikers for $180,000. The plan was to build a new jail that would relieve crowding in the penitentiary on nearby Blackwell’s Island. The Commission of Charities and Corrections, tasked with handling jails and public asylums, also wanted to separate “the institutions of the distressed and those for punishment of the guilty,” stated a 1886 New York Times article.
That new jail wasn’t completed until the early 1930s (above), following years of city officials using Rikers Island as a dumping ground of ash and street sweepings that eventually enlarged it to more than 400 acres.
Finally, “construction of 26 buildings consisting of seven cellblocks for 2,600 inmates, an administration building, receiving center, mess hall, shops, a chapel and homes for the warden and deputy warden” were opened to men only, according to the NYC Department of Records & Information Services.
Construction issues and scandal plagued the jail complex almost as soon as it opened. By 1954, Rikers was home to 7,900 inmates in space designed for 4,200, per the NYC Department of Records & Information Services.
Then came the crash. Northeast Airlines Flight 823 took off from LaGuardia Airport on February 1, 1957 in the middle of a storm on a freezing night.
The DC-6A with 95 passengers and six crew members failed to climb, and “the Miami-bound plane crashed into a patch of trees on Rikers Island, ripping off its wings and bursting into flames less than a minute after take-off,” wrote the New York Post in 2017.
A deputy warden made the decision to send 69 inmates, who were already on snow-removal duty, to the crash site to help pull survivors from the burned and broken aircraft.
“The first inmate to arrive at the scene worked as a housekeeper for the jail’s Protestant minister,” reported the New York Post. “He helped pull desperate passengers through the fuselage and doused their smoldering clothes with wet snow.”
The Staten Island Advance covered the story the day after the disaster, stating that 60 inmates were working in a poultry house that evening. They realized a plane had crashed when they saw an orange glow through the snow.
You tell about the inmates,” the Advance quoted a police officer on the scene. “What they did! Without them, many would have died out there. They went right in there…they took [passengers] out in their arms.”
Besides pulling out the survivors, the incarcerated men brought them to the jail infirmary (above photo) and assisted in providing first aid. As emergency crews arrived on the island, rumors circulated that inmates were trying to escape. But per the Post, everyone was accounted for.
In total, 20 passengers were killed in the crash and subsequent fire. An investigation deemed the tragedy to be the result of pilot error.
As for the heroic inmates, nearly 60 “eventually had their sentences reduced or commuted because of their heroic efforts, wrote the Post.
Most of these former inmates remain unknown, as their names were not released publicly. In an era of daily newspapers and a handful of TV networks, not every individual who acted heroically made it into the media cycle. Presumably, most went on with their lives in anonymity.
[Top image: Life photo archive; second image: NYPL Digital Collections; third image: New York Corrections History; fourth image: NYC Department of Records & Information Services; fifth image: NYC Department of Records & Information Services; sixth image: Life photo archive; seventh image: Bureau of Airplane Accidents Archives
PHOTO OF THE DAY
ARTIST ALICE BOH
AND HER DESIGNS AT THE RIVAA GALLERY
CREDITS
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
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