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    A Photo Tour Of Beautifully Decaying North Brother Island

    by John Del Signore
    Published February 21, 2012
    Modified February 21, 2012
    Gallery
    24 Photos
    North Brother Island, located just off shore from the Bronx in the Hell Gate section of the East River, has a fascinating history: It was once home to a quarantine hospital that housed Typhoid Mary; it's where the General Slocum sank and burned in 1904, killing over 1,200 people; after World War II, the island housed war veterans who were students at local colleges; and in the '50s it was home to an experimental drug treatment program that was mired in corruption. The island has been abandoned for almost half a century now, and the public is prohibited, but the Parks Department still has access too it, and we recently spoke with John Krawchuk, the department's Director of Historic Preservation. Click through on the photos for our conversation with Krawchuk.

    <a href="http://gothamist.com/tags/northbrotherisland">North Brother Island</a>, located just off shore from the Bronx in the Hell Gate section of the East River, has a fascinating history: It was once home to a quarantine hospital that housed Typhoid Mary; it's where the General Slocum sank and burned in 1904, killing over 1,200 people; after World War II, the island housed war veterans who were students at local colleges; and in the '50s it was home to an experimental drug treatment program that was mired in corruption. <p></p><p>The island has been abandoned for almost half a century now, and the public is prohibited, but the Parks Department still has access too it, and we recently spoke with John Krawchuk, the department's Director of Historic Preservation. Click through on the photos for our conversation with Krawchuk. <br/></p>

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    <a href="http://gothamist.com/tags/northbrotherisland">North Brother Island</a>, located just off shore from the Bronx in the Hell Gate section of the East River, has a fascinating history: It was once home to a quarantine hospital that housed Typhoid Mary; it's where the General Slocum sank and burned in 1904, killing over 1,200 people; after World War II, the island housed war veterans who were students at local colleges; and in the '50s it was home to an experimental drug treatment program that was mired in corruption. <p></p><p>The island has been abandoned for almost half a century now, and the public is prohibited, but the Parks Department still has access too it, and we recently spoke with John Krawchuk, the department's Director of Historic Preservation. Click through on the photos for our conversation with Krawchuk. <br/></p>
    Gothamist
    North Brother Island, located just off shore from the Bronx in the Hell Gate section of the East River, has a fascinating history: It was once home to a quarantine hospital that housed Typhoid Mary; it's where the General Slocum sank and burned in 1904, killing over 1,200 people; after World War II, the island housed war veterans who were students at local colleges; and in the '50s it was home to an experimental drug treatment program that was mired in corruption. The island has been abandoned for almost half a century now, and the public is prohibited, but the Parks Department still has access too it, and we recently spoke with John Krawchuk, the department's Director of Historic Preservation. Click through on the photos for our conversation with Krawchuk.
    Where did the name come from? It's really a very special place. I think the North Brother name initially came from an early Dutch name and there's a North Brother and a South Brother, and eventually it transitioned from the Dutch name which I cant recall at the moment. It was translated into English as North and South Brother. Do you know what it was originally used for? The earliest known occupation was probably around 1880 or so. It was purchased for residential use. There was a man who had purchased it for construction of a private home and it didn't really last long because its in a fairly remote area of the harbor. It's in the East River between Queens and the Brother, at the headwater of the Hell Gate. Hell Gate is pretty treacherous, huh? They were until they blasted them in the 1800s to allow ships to pass through. It made it a little less treacherous but the waters from Long Island Sound and the East River kind of converge there, which creates a pretty turbulent situation. The island is closest to Riker's Island, which most New Yorkers have the strongest association with and it's technically part of the Bronx.
    So this guy wanted to have a home there and that failed? The island was sold and there was a lot of violence starting in the 1850s and then they were used for the sick and the insane and incarcerating people. It was used for social isolation. The island ended up converting in 1885, it was purchased by the Riverside Hospital for contagious diseases and they established a hospital for tuberculosis patients on the island. And they operated it not very long until they sold it. But it was initially founded by the Sisters of Charity who were a Roman Catholic order, whose mandate is to help the sick. They were the ones that initially founded the Riverside Hospital. They managed it til about 1892 and then it passed on and it continued to be used for tuberculosis until the late 1930s and after that it was used as temporary for housing for soldiers coming home from World War II. Finally, in 1952 it became a drug rehabilitation facility.What kind of drugs? You know, I don't know. I don't know a lot about the history of it. I haven't done much research on it. That would probably be a fascinating topic for someone to explore. I can imagine it was probably a pretty horrible place. It would really have to be for any disease, but particularly for drug rehabilitation, it was probably pretty terrifying. It is pretty remote, you can only really get there by boat. And the waters are quite treacherous, so even folks that were kept there for medical reasons, it wasn't like they could just swim away.
    When did the city step in? New York City took possession of the island—the City Parks Department—in 2001, when it was mapped as park land. We took possession from the Health and Hospitals Corporation. It had been abandoned. After 1964 it probably had some light use, but by the '70s it was completely abandoned. It became very overgrown and eventually started to re-vegetate, the buildings started to crumble. They weren't heated or operable in any way. A forest took over again of mainly non-native species, and it became a bird habitat. It became a stopping place for herons. So it was recognized in the 1990s that it should really be preserved for its natural habitat but of course also for its cultural resources that remain. I'm the Director of Historic Preservation. I was appointed in 2002 and that was first thing that I did as director, was to put together a team of preservationists who went out and surveyed the cultural resources. We have many divisions at the New York City Parks Department, but another is the Natural Resources Group, they deal with vegetative areas as well as flora and fauna. They do a lot of work restoring natural habitats, so we worked in conjunction with them to look at the island and see how we could really bring together the eco-cultural resources there and protect them and their future interpretation for the public.
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