Roosevelt Island
This island, smack dab in the middle of the East River (between Manhattan and Queens) got a bit of an inauspicious start. In the 1800s it was home to a prison, a prison hospital, a lunatic asylum (sheesh, even the name is inauspicious), and later a smallpox hospital. At one point the island was renamed Welfare Island but I’m not sure many folks fared well there.
When the era of hey-we-should-treat-our-down-and-out-folks-better came (thank heaven!) they did away with most of that on the island. No more prison (although that moved to Riker’s Island), no more smallpox (yay, vaccines!) so no more smallpox hospital, and definitely no more lunatic asylum — phew! That left an island void of purpose, but that soon changed. In the 1960s there was a concerted effort to make the island into something. That started with apartment complexes and a few memorials. In 1973, Welfare Island became Roosevelt Island and a lovely remembrance of 32nd president Franklin Delano Roosevelt was installed a few years later.
We traveled to the island this past week — to see what all is there now. The trip to the island is either by subway or aerial tram — guess which one we picked! The tram is cool, you get swooped up and ‘fly’ over part of the city, the East River and get dropped down into the center of the island. A small highlight!
Get Christine Kurihara’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Once there, Sarah and I rented citibikes to ride around the very narrow, not too long, strip of land. There are many spots along the route where you can easily see both sides. The day was muggy and quite warm, so we sweated our way up and down, but mostly to our delight as we discovered the different aspects of the Island.
First we headed to The Graduate — a hotel embedded in Cornell’s Tech campus that was built on the island in the 2010s. They have a nifty little cafe there with an impressive interior design. Actually the whole tech campus is quite architecturally nouveau and interesting. We had a scrumptious hash (we won’t mention the service, well, we weren’t in a hurry, so, ok).
Next we headed to the southern tip. We visited the FDR memorial and saw a photo shoot for Alo activewear while there. We were amazed at the amount of people and gear that was required!
From there we headed to the other end to see the lighthouse (the tiniest lighthouse I have ever seen, but then the island is pretty tiny, itself) and a memorial dedicated to Nellie Bly, a female journalist who managed to make a name for herself when there were virtually no women journalists. She was working for Pulitzer (the man) when she went undercover (feigning insanity!) to explore the atrocities at the Asylum on what was then called Blackwell Island. Her work led to significant changes there and in the ‘system’ and, in effect, brought about the concept of investigative journalism. Wow, why don’t I know more about her?
We also drove past the former smallpox hospital, which is now a ruin of a place and a sort of memorial to the times.
Stay tuned — still more adventures to be had in this town.
