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The Roosevelt Island Story Roosevelt Island! But the Indians called it "Long Island" and the first Dutch owners knew it as Hogs Island - far off farm property in the middle of the East River. The Blackwell family, taking possession of the island in 1676, held it for over 150 years, mined its quarries, farmed its fruit trees and during the post Revolutionary era built its now restored farmhouse, Blackwell House. In 1828, New York City purchased the Blackwell's Island for $32,500. South of today's tram station a vast penitentiary soon was erected. The first of the innumerable city institutions to sprawl across the Island and hold millions of New Yorkers, small and great, it set the scene for decades of architectural, social and medical advance and defeat. The massive octagonal ruin at the northern end of the island and below Coler Hospital is the only relic of the next institution founded here, America's first "Municipal Lunatic Asylum" (1839). Designed by Alexander Jackson Davis, pioneer of our nation's Greco-Roman revival, it was visited by Charles Dickens in 1841. Dickens commented on its magnificent staircase, its woe-be-gone inmates and the tourists flocking to see both. 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. Until the 1960's Maxey's (Mc Carthy's nickname) crudely carved plaque remained:
In 1895, Metropolitan Hospital occupied its buildings and joined the island's City Hospital as two of the world's largest institutions. The City Hospital Building was demolished in 1994.
The Island had several names changes - in 1921 from Blackwell's to Welfare and then in 1972 from Welfare to Roosevelt. In 1969 the City of New York deeded the island to the State of New York for 99 years. 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. In 1875, America's third school of
Nursing occupied its buildings. 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. Architect Frederick Clark
Withers planned the handsome structure, and a $85,000 gift in 1889 of George
Bliss to the New York Episcopal Mission Society for its ministry of comfort and
hope to the unwanted poor and sick in the surrounding almshouses. The chapel's
bell, now in Good Shepherd Plaza, summoned them not only to worship, but daily
from their straw beds to long listless hours of loneliness. Withers also designed Strecker Memorial
Laboratory (1892), now being restored to the south of Goldwater Hospital.
Strecker overshadowed three generations of unparalleled medical research.
The Roosevelt Island Historical Society promotes awareness of our Island's unique story and pursues preservation of its landmarks and artifacts.
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