North Brother Island, New York (photograph via)
North Brother Island is an abandoned island in the East River situated between the Bronx and Riker’s Island. The island was uninhabited until 1885, when the Riverside Hospital was built.
Riverside Hospital was founded to treat and isolate victims of smallpox. Its mission eventually expanded to other quarantinable diseases. Typhoid Mary - the first person in the United States to be identified as a healthy carrier of typhoid fever - was confined to the island for over two decades until she died there in 1938. The hospital closed shortly thereafter.
After World War II, the island housed war veterans who were students at local colleges, along with their families. After the nationwide housing shortage abated, the island was once again abandoned.
In the 1950s a center opened to treat adolescent drug users. The facility claimed to be the first to offer treatment, rehabilitation, and education facilities to young drug offenders. Heroin addicts were confined to this island and locked in a room until they were clean. Many of them believed they were being held against their will (as one person wrote on the wall). By the early 1960s widespread staff corruption and patient recidivism forced the facility to close.
The island is currently abandoned and off-limits to the public. Most of the original hospitals buildings still stand, but are heavily deteriorated and in danger of collapse. A dense forest conceals the ruined hospital buildings and supports one of the area’s largest nesting colonies of Black-crowned Night Heron.
Suggested by Mat Coes
Abandonia at its best ..
