Islands

As one would guess, Roosevelt Island was not always known as Roosevelt Island. In fact over the past four hundred years it has gone through six name changes. From the Native American Minnahanonck, or “nice island,” to the Dutch name Varckens Island (meaning hogs island) to the English name Manning Island which became Blackwell Island, to American, Welfare Island and finally to the present, Roosevelt Island. Most of these names changes came as ownership was transferred from one party to the next, marking very distinct periods of history for the island which we now know as Roosevelt. Some of these names are descriptive; during the Dutch period, for example, the island was used to raise hogs. The period during which the island was called Blackwell seems coincidentally appropriate as it was certainly the bleakest.

While the island was known as Blackwell it was the site of asylums and a penitentiary. The conditions were inhumane as was noted by English Writer, Charles Dickens. During his circuit through the United States Dickens visited the island in 1842 describing it, in a work known as American notes, as having a “lounging, listless, madhouse air.” Nelly Bly, one of America’s first female journalists, worked under cover at the lunatic asylum as a patient to report on its atrocious treatment of inmates.  read more »

The photograph above is of High Island, an 8 acre spit of land between the Pelham Bay and the Long Island Sound, as seen from its more well-known neighbor, City Island. After researching High Island it remains somewhat of a mystery to me. Artifacts have been found on its shores, alluding to a time prior to the arrival of Europeans, but its Siwanoy name is still unknown. Even the origin of its present day name is uncertain. Some would guess that its name describes its physical location in the Northern reach of the city, or perhaps describing the profile of the island which is comparatively high. John McNamara, in History in Asphalt, states that it could be a Dutch name, Haai Eylgant, meaning shark island, due to the warm shallow waters of the Pelham Bay which tend to attract sharks.  read more »

The watery barriers of islands often prevent the infiltration of outside influences, as seen in the history of Broad Channel. For Hoffman and Swinburne Islands, however, these barriers were intended to keep potentially harmful change from spreading outward.

Ellis Island is rightly considered the gateway to New York City during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While this is the case, some immigrants took a detour through Hoffman Island or Swinburne Island. The two man-made islands, designated as quarantines for arriving immigrants, were created in the 1870’s in an area of the Lower New York Bay referred to as Orchard Shoals. Hoffman, the larger of the two, detained passengers exposed to contagious diseases while the sick and visibly infected passengers were hospitalized on Swinburne.  read more »

Believe it or not, all of these names at one point referred to the same place: the only inhabited island in the Jamaica Bay, now known as Broad Channel. Have you ever been to Broad Channel? If you have, then you know that it looks nothing like the rest of New York City. Having spent half of my youth in Queens and the other half on the east end of Long Island, I can say that the Jamaica Bay area looks far more like the latter than the former. How did this happen?  read more »

Sometimes, from beyond the skyscrapers, the cry of a tugboat finds you in your insomnia, and you remember that this desert of iron and cement is an island
-Albert Camus; American Journals (April/May 1946 entry)

In the quote above, Camus reminds us that this skinny piece of land, on which are built so many buildings and skyscrapers, is in fact, an island. What struck me about this quote today weren't its emotional implications but rather the fact that "Island" is not the immediate impression one gets of Manhattan. New York City, however, is actually comprised of many islands - all of which have interesting stories of their own. I enjoy islands for the peculiarities they tend to develop so I decided to take some of the next few weeks to highlight a few lesser known islands which make up this great city.

I've always been fascinated with landscapes changing through time as seen though the lens of the map. Shorelines, especially where there are lots of waves and tides, are particularly interesting things in that they are so clearly dynamic. These fire insurance maps of Coney Island, created between 1880 and 1907 document those changes beautifully. In addition to those covering Coney Island, the NYPL has digitized close to 2000 maps at this level of detail for all five boroughs of New York City.

G.W. Bromley, Atlas of the entire City of Brooklyn, 1880, Plate 35

E. Robinson, Robinson's atlas of Kings County, New York, 1890, Plate 20

G.W. Bromley, Atlas of the Borough of Brooklyn, 1907, Plate 28