Roosevelt Island history

In 1828, New York City purchased the Blackwell's Island for $32,500.

Accordingly, 1829 saw one of the first institutions constructed on the island, Blackwell’s Island Penitentiary—a building that was continually expanded for decades, growing in tandem with New York’s ever-increasing number of felons.

Built in 1839, the asylum epitomized the worst conventions of the 19th century when it came to mental health.

Built in 1839, the asylum epitomized the worst conventions of the 19th century when it came to mental health. It earned its reputation quickly: Charles Dickens wrote about the horror of this institution in 1843, after visiting the asylum in person. “Everything had a lounging, listless, madhouse air, which was very painful.

But physicians in charge of the asylum deplored this situation, and in 1850 a suitable staff of orderlies and nurses was hired.

At the island's lower end brood the ruins of Smallpox Hospital, first in our nation to receive victims of contagion and plague (1854). James Renwick, famed architect of Grace Church and St Patrick's Cathedral was its designer.

Of the hospitals and centers on the island, the most important were the Small Pox Hospital which opened in 1856 and was the first hospital in the country dedicated to curing the disease, and the New York City Lunatic Asylum.

Our lighthouse overlooks the swirling Hellgate waters. Its construction in 1874, according to a Renwick Design, was preceded by long "negotiations" with John Mc Carthy, an asylum inmate who'd built his own clay fort there to defend us against British invasion.

In reality, the name Nellie Brown served as a pseudonym for Nellie Bly, an investigative reporter who exposed the abuses of the Lunatic Asylum in 1887 for the New York World.

Withers also designed Strecker Memorial Laboratory (1892), now being restored to the south of Goldwater Hospital.

Found guilty of fomenting an unlawful assembly, Goldman was sentenced to a year in Blackwell in 1894—the same year that Goldman’s friend and idol Eugene Debs led the famous Pullman Railroad strike, which Goldman would have doubtless supported had she been able.

In 1895, Metropolitan Hospital occupied its buildings and joined the island's City Hospital as two of the world's largest institutions.

In 1921, the city changed Blackwell’s Island to the aptly named “Welfare Island,” but the marketing strategy carried little effect.

By the 1930’s, a new generation of penitentiary administration proved extraordinarily corrupt.

The Penitentiary closed shortly thereafter, in 1936.

The crown jewel in New York’s nascent and nation-leading hospital system was Goldwater Memorial Hospital, a five-block-long building built by FDR’s Works Progress Administration, and opened by LaGuardia in 1939.

Until the 1960's Maxey's (Mc Carthy's nickname) crudely carved plaque remained:

In 1969, Welfare Island was leased out from the city to the state through the New York State Urban Corporation Development with a 99 year lease.

Our 8,300 apartment dwellers, who in 1975 began joining 2,000 long term hospital residents in forming the new Roosevelt Island community, finding the restored Chapel of the Good Shepherd central to their religious, cultural, political and social life.

The original Roosevelt Island aerial tramway - the first tram in the country to be used for urban transportation – was opened in May 1976.

By the time the subway station finally opened, in 1990, the tram had become a popular and necessary mode of transportation.

The tram was shut down in March 2010 for a complete renovation.

The hospital closed in 2013, demolished in preparation for the building of the soon-to-arrive Cornell Tech Campus.

The Coler-Goldwater Hospital is scheduled to close in 2014, after which it will be demolished to build the CornellNYC Tech Campus.

If you’re interested in New York City’s myriad mystery islands, join us Thursday, March 26, 2015 at 6:30 for The Last Unknown Place in New York City: A Conversation with Christopher Payne & Michael Miscione.