Less than a mile from Manhattan — one of the priciest and most densely populated places in the world — sits a mysterious island that people abandoned more than half a century ago.
“North Brother Island is among New York City’s most extraordinary and least known heritage and natural places,” wrote the authors of a recent University of Pennsylvania study about the location.
The city owns the 22-acre plot, which pokes out of the East River between the South Bronx’s industrial coast and a notorious prison: Rikers Island Correctional Center.
It’s illegal for the public to set foot on North Brother Island and its smaller companion, South Brother Island. But even birds seem to avoid its crumbling, abandoned structures (and contrary to Broad City’s depiction of the island, there isn’t a package pick-up center).
In 2017, producers for the Science Channel obtained the city’s permission to visit North Brother Island — and the crew invited Business Insider to tag along.
The story of our small expedition premiered this month on “What on Earth?“, a popular satellite-image-based TV show that’s now in its fourth season. (Our segment closes out episode 12.)
Here’s what we saw and learned while romping around one of New York’s spookiest and most forgotten places.
This small aluminum boat was our ride.
The East River was crawling with police, probably because Rikers Island Correctional Institute is less than a mile away — and they are wary of anyone visiting North Brother Island.
Pulling up to the island, we navigated around rotten dock supports. The ferry dock and its rusted derrick looked ready to collapse at any moment.
The island was first claimed in 1614 and inhabited in 1885, and its history is checkered with death, disease, and decay.
In June 1904, for instance, a steamship called the General Slocum burst into flames and sank in the East River. Though 321 people survived, the bodies of 1,021 passengers who died washed ashore for days.
The arc-shaped Hell Gate Bridge on the East River is visible from North Brother’s western shore.
Sea levels could rise by as much as 2.5 feet in the next 35 years around New York City. If and when a large hurricane rolls through as the waters rise, the surges will swallow the island’s habitats, ecology, structures, and history.
One of the first buildings I saw was the morgue (right). The fractured chimney of a coal-fired boiler room (left) is also visible from miles away.
At every turn, the decay is both eerie and beautiful.
You have to look where you’re going, or you’ll run into spider webs big enough to boggle the mind.
From the 1880s through 1943, the city quarantined people sick with highly contagious diseases on the island — including the infamous “Typhoid Mary” Mallon. Those who died were stored in the morgue.
Rather than take the ferry each day, some hospital workers opted to live in the Nurse’s Home. Bathtubs have fallen through the ceiling of the 40,000-square-foot Victorian-style mansion, which was built in 1905.
It could collapse any day now.
Further down the main road is the Male Dormitory.
The dormitory became a nursery school for veterans’ families who lived on the island during the post-World World II housing crisis, from 1946 through 1951
Few animals seem to live here, and a Parks and Recreation official said that mammals are practically nonexistent — no rats, chipmunks, mice, and the like.
The largest building on the island was one of the last to be completed: The Tuberculosis Pavilion.
The south end of the tubercular ward had a kitchen.
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