An island of ill fame, between Manhattan and Queens

Roosevelt Island is connected to land by a cable car on one side and the Queensboro Bridge on the other. Photo by the author

The Indians called it Minnehannock - long island. After the purchase by the Dutch, it became known as Varken, under the British it received the name Manning, after that it was called Blackwell Island, from 1921 to 1973 it was Welfare Island, and only then, as part of a campaign to perpetuate the name of the 32nd President of the United States, it became Roosevelt Island.
This is a small elongated island, about 300 meters wide and just over 3 kilometers long. It's like wedged between Manhattan and Queens. It is connected to land by a cable car on one side and the Queensboro Bridge on the other. From here you have a breathtaking view of the city.
Since 1828, when the island was bought by the authorities in New York for $ 32 thousands, a long and sad phase of its history began: Roosevelt Island became the seat of urban criminals and madmen.

First, a prison was opened here with a prison hospital, and in 1839-1841, a psychiatric hospital New York City Lunatic Asylum with the Octagon tower was built.

This 8 coal building, erected by architect Alexander Jackson Davis in 1839, was rebuilt in 2006 and included in a residential complex and store. On the Octagon is the largest array of solar cells in New York.
Almost immediately after its opening, the clinic was mired in scandals related to financing and conditions of care for patients. At the same time, the number of patients increased rapidly just a year after the opening. 1 people were kept here - twice as many as were included in the project. As a result, there were interruptions in the nutrition of patients, outbreaks of infectious diseases, and high mortality. It was even necessary to bring in convicts from a neighboring prison as orderlies to cut costs.

Locals are trying to bypass the ruins of the hospital side. Photo by the author.

In the 1842 year, during a trip to America, Charles Dickens visited the clinic, he was shocked by the conditions of detention:

“...Everything bore the imprint of the languid idleness of a madhouse, painful for an outside observer. The grimaces of an idiot with long, disheveled hair huddled in the corner; the inarticulate mutterings of a maniac pointing his finger at something with a disgusting laugh; wandering glances, fierce, wild faces, feverish movements of people, gloomily biting their lips and hands and biting their nails - all this appeared before you without any mask, in all its naked ugliness and horror. In the dining room, an empty, dull and gloomy room with bare walls, one woman was locked. She, they told me, has suicidal tendencies. If anything could strengthen her in such a decision, it would, of course, be the unbearable monotony of such an existence.
The spectacle of the terrible crowd filling these halls and galleries shocked me to such an extent that I tried to shorten the inspection program as much as possible and refused to visit that part of the building where the obstinate and violent were kept under stricter supervision.”

(Charles Dickens "American Notes")

The scandal erupted when reporter Nellie Bly entered the hospital for 10 days, conducting an investigation on behalf of the most famous publisher, Joseph Pulitzer. To prove the facts of abuse of patients, she feigned madness and ended up in a psychiatric hospital on the island. The shocking results of her experiment formed the basis for a series of revealing articles and an autobiographical book, “10 Days in a Madhouse.” It turned out that many patients were not crazy at all.

This year in Hollywood a film was made from the book, a psychological drama 10 Days in a Madhouse. ForumDaily опубликовал interview with Russian actress Alexandra Kallas, who played in the film an antagonist of the main character, a German tyrant nurse working in a psychiatric hospital.

This scandal gave impetus to the revision of funding for such hospitals across the country.
As a result, by the end of the 19 century, the insane asylum on the island was disbanded, and patients were transferred to other health centers of the city.
Another medical facility that was discovered in the 19 century on the island is the Smallpox Hospital. It was believed that the isolated location of the island is ideal for treating patients with smallpox. The hospital was closed in the 70s of the last century and turned into ruins. The efforts of the local authorities to restore the building have not been successful.

The hospital was closed in the 70s of the last century and turned into ruins. Photo by the author.

Locals are trying to bypass the abandoned building side, but tourists have chosen ivy-twined, sinister, but picturesque walls of the building.
In the mid-20th century, two more large hospitals were opened on Roosevelt Island - Goldwater Memorial Hospital and Coler Hospital. In 2, these hospitals were merged into one, and in 1996 it actually ceased to exist in its previous form. Now there is a rehabilitation center building here.
Until the beginning of the last century, only ferry went to the island. In 1909, the Queensboro Bridge was built. It was only in 1976 that the line of the cableway was crossed over the East River, and later a metro station appeared there.

However, even now the island remains a rather secluded place; it even has its own newspaper. Most of the territory is pedestrian, the streets are not crowded and very clean.
In 1872, another local landmark was installed on the narrow northern tip of the island - the Gothic-style 15-meter lighthouse, offering stunning views of the East River and Manhattan.

In the southern part is the Park of Four Freedoms, dedicated to the memory of President Franklin Roosevelt. The granite cubes list the freedoms that the president considered fundamental: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

Despite its notoriety and such a specific history, for many, Roosevelt Island is just a piece of land between Manhattan and Queens. Those who find the center of New York unaffordable rent apartments here.

Those who live on the island say that there is clean, well-groomed, lots of greenery. Photo by the author.

Evgeniy, a former resident of Kiev, has been living on Roosevelt Island for a couple of years. He is still only dreaming about housing in Manhattan itself, but the young man has already secured a beautiful view of the city: “I really like it - it’s a place that’s really different from the rest of New York. Clean, well-groomed, lots of greenery, parks and barbecue. In general, it seems that people live here who don’t give a damn about where they are.”

Evgeniy noted that New Yorkers still consider this place unsuitable for living, so for those who do not believe in the bad reputation of the island, this has a positive effect on the cost of housing. When Evgeniy tells his friends that he lives on an island, many are very surprised that people live here at all. And they live - almost 12 thousand people. There is a regular bus service on the island, there are supermarkets, restaurants, a hospital, a school, libraries, a police station, a promenade and sports grounds in parks.

Life here is no different from the Big Apple - one stop from Manhattan, 10 minutes from Times Square, and at the same time it is quieter, cheaper, without crowds of tourists, without problems with parking - and with the most luxurious view of New York.

See also:

Walk through New York: the secret treasures of the city

Walk through New York: the luxury of the city

Walk Around New York: West Village

Walking Around New York: Battery Park

Walking Around New York: Upper West Side

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