North Brother Island and South Brother Island were both previously known as the" De Gesellen" (the companions). They were declared by the Dutch West India Company in 1614.
Together the two Brother Islands, North and South, have a land area of 81,423 square meters, or 20.12 acres
South Brother Island:
Jacob Rupperts the former owner of the New York Yankees and credited for bringing babe ruth from the boston Red Soxs, bought a summer house in south brother island. he would bring babe ruth to the island and it was rumored that he would have babe ruth practice his swings with golf balls.the summer house bruned in 1939. in 1944 the island was pruchased by John Gerosa (president of the Metropolitan Roofing Supply Company.) his intentions where to build a summer retreat for his employees.but never pass through/
later the island was sold to Hampton Scows Inc for $10.
Hampton Scows dutifully paid property taxes every year but did not develop the island. On November 20, 2007, it was reported that the City of New York would be purchasing the island and preserving it as a wildlife sanctuary. The price is reported to have been in the neighborhood of $2,000,000.
Currently the island is the homebass for several species, notable Black-Crowned Night Heron, Gret Egret,Snowy Egret and Double-Crested Cormorant.
North Brother Island:
North Brother Island is located in between the Bronx and Rikers Island. This island was uninhabited until 1885 when Riverside Hospital moved there from their previous location, Roosevelt Island. Riverside hospital was founded in the 1850's and cured patients with Smallpox. The hospital isolate potential carriers into the island for isolatationg. eventually expanded to other quarantinable diseases. One famous patient was Mary Mallon better known as Typhoid Mary was identified as a healthy carrier of typhoid fever. Mallon was born in 1869 in County Tyrone, Ireland and immigrates to the US in 1884. She worked as a cook in NYC between 1900 and 1907. The households she worked in had a sudden break out of the infection; Mallon change jobs after families were showing symptoms of typhoid. It became a pattern of her jumping from a different household each time after families became sick. What all households had in common was she was the source of the breakout. Over the course of her career as a cook she infected 47 people three whom died from the disease. she was later investigated by doctor George sopher who told her she was a carrier of typhoid. Mallon disagreed and was in denial. The NYC Health Department sent Dr. Sara Josephine Baker to talk to Mary. A few days later baker arrived at Mary current job with several police officers and took her into custody. The NYC health inspector investigated and found her to be a carrier. She was isolated for three years at a hospital located on North Brother Island and became the island cook. She was released on the condition she would not work with food
Once she left she change her name to Mary Brown and in 1915 infected 25 people while working as a cook at NY Sloan Hospital. She returned to the quarantine on the island for life and later was allowed to work in the island laboratory as a technician.
This hospital closed shorty afterwards.
On June 15 1904 the general slocum a steamship took a group frm st marks evangelical Lutheran church in the German distract better known as little Germany. Over 1300 passengers mostly of woman and children boarded the ship. As the ship pass by east 90th street at around 9:30 the ship caught fire starting in a storage compartment. The first notice of the fire was 10am. When the captain first heard of the fire it was by a little boy but the captain thought it was joke. Later hearing that the ship was on fire he demanded the crew to water down the fire. When they took out the hoes it fell apart. Also the crew never practices a fire drill. The life boats where inaccessible and tired up. The life preservers fell apart in passenger hands. Desperate mothers but the life jackets on their children and throw them overboard causing the children to drown instead of floating. Majority of the women and children didn’t know how to swim. By the time the general Slocum was beached at north brother island an estimate of 1021 people died and 321 survivors. The general Slocum was known as NYC worst loss of life disaster until 9/11.
Later on after World War II, the island housed war veterans and their families. Once the nationwide housing shortage abated the island was abandoned again.
The island is currently abandoned and off-limits to the public.
A dense forest conceals the ruined hospital buildings, but supports one of the area's largest nesting colonies of Black-crowned Night Heron.
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