'' wash ashore on North Brother Island, 1904 Both North Brother Island and South Brother Island were claimed by the
Dutch West India Company in 1614 and were originally named
De Gesellen, translated as "the companions" or "the brethren" in English. By the late 1600s the islands were owned by the British who occupied the area. In 1695 the government granted both to James Graham who did not develop the islands because the currents in the area were treacherous. The islands were both originally part of
Queens County. On June 8, 1881, North Brother Island was transferred to what was then part of New York County (later to become
the Bronx). On April 16, 1964, South Brother Island was also transferred to the Bronx. The islands had been incorporated into
Long Island City in 1870, before the
consolidation of New York City in 1898.
North Brother Island The northern of the islands was uninhabited until 1885, though
a lighthouse was built in 1869. In the mid-1880s The island was the site of the wreck of the
General Slocum, a steamship that burned on June 15, 1904: 1,021 people died either from the fire on board the ship, or from drowning before the ship beached on the island's shores. According to
Joseph Mitchell, a reporter for newspapers and for
The New Yorker, the island was the site of many outings of "The Honorable John McSorley Pickle, Beefsteak, Baseball Nine, and Chowder Club" organized by John McSorley of
McSorley's Old Ale House; photos of the outings are featured on the walls of the bar.
Mary Mallon, also known as Typhoid Mary, was confined to the island for over two decades until she died there in November 1938. Because of her contagious illness, she had been declared a public menace in 1915; she suffered a stroke in 1932 and was thereafter confined to the hospital. According to the
Smithsonian magazine, the need for a quarantine hospital in a remote location had declined by the 1930s, as "public health advances lessened the need to quarantine large numbers of individuals". Following
World War II, the island housed war veterans who were students at local colleges and their families. After the nationwide housing shortage abated, the island was again abandoned until the 1950s, when a center opened to treat adolescent
drug addicts. The facility claimed it was the first to offer treatment, rehabilitation, and education facilities to young drug offenders.
Heroin addicts were confined to this facility and locked in a room until they were clean. Many of them believed they were being held against their will. Staff corruption and cost forced the facility to close in 1963. Since the mid-1960s, New York City mayors have considered a variety of uses for the island.
John Lindsay, for instance, proposed to sell it, and
Ed Koch thought it could be converted into housing for the homeless. The city also considered using it as an extension of the jail at
Rikers Island. Some buildings are in danger of collapse; a dense forest conceals the ruined hospital buildings. In October 2014,
New York City Council member
Mark Levine, chair of the City Council's Parks Committee, led a delegation to visit the island, and declared his desire afterward to open the island for limited "light-touch, environmentally sensitive" public access. In October 2016,
New York magazine reported that the council had commissioned a study from the
University of Pennsylvania's School of Design, followed by a public hearing, on how the island could be converted into a park with controlled access by the public. In 2017, reporter Josh Robin of the
NY1 channel was allowed to visit the North island and posted a video report that included some of the abandoned buildings. Also in 2017, the
Science Channel filmed an episode on North Brother Island for the series
What on Earth?. Journalist Dave Mosher accompanied the crew and posted a report and still photographs of the buildings and environment. The report stated that the island is "both eerie and beautiful" but added that most buildings were unsafe, that few buildings still included a "functional roof" and poison ivy was problematic everywhere. for a fire in one of the structures on the island. The marine battalion also stated that the roof had collapsed. Marine 6 transported firefighters from the Rock to North Brother Island to combat the blaze. Marine 1 also responded with their big boat, "343", which is capable of pumping 50,000 gallons per minute and assisted in putting the fire out. Engine 83 and Ladder 29 were first due. It took firefighters 5 hours and 12 minutes to extinguish the blaze. The YouTube Channel "FDNY Response Videos" posted a video showing the firefighting operations.
South Brother Island In the mid-19th century, Alfred W. White, who was in charge of public health for the city, used South Brother Island as the city's first dump, where garbage, manure, offal and carcasses were sent to help clean up the city, which consisted at that time of only Manhattan and its islands. However, the island is only about a half-mile from the Bronx and the country estates of the city's rich, such as
William Ligett and
Jacob Lorillard, both scions of tobacco families. It was also close enough to the shoreline villages of Queens County to be noxious to them as well, and the combination of Queens villages and wealthy Bronxites convinced the Queens County Supreme Court to stop the dumping.
Jacob Ruppert, a brewery magnate and early owner of the
New York Yankees, had a summer house on the island that burned down in 1909. Hampton Scows paid property taxes every year but did not develop the island. In November 2007, the island was purchased in a complicated transaction in which $2 million of federal grant money from the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coastal and Estuarine Land Conservation Program was allocated to the
Wildlife Conservation Society and
the POINT Community Development Corporation. The
Trust for Public Land then acquired the island on behalf of those organizations, and then donated it to the city's Parks Department as a wildlife sanctuary. South Brother Island was the 13th island to come under the Parks Department's jurisdiction. ==Wildlife==