I was asked to help out a pal with a photo of the ancient Smallpox Hospital on Roosevelt Island. I realize the last really good batch of photos I obtained of the place came in 2005. In the years since, the ruins have been buttressed with metal struts which unfortunately are necessary to maintain it. I should be able to get back to the island relatively soon, if decent weekend weather ever materializes.
photos: Andrew Harris
1828 was the year that a long succession of institutions and hospitals appeared on what was then called Blackwells Island after a prominent family in Ravenswood, Queens who had holdings on the island. The first “lunatic asylum” appeared in 1841 to be followed by an almshouse (debtor’s prison) in 1847 and the first hospital in 1849. Charles Dickens visited the island in the 1840s and delineated the inhumanely harsh conditions of the asylums.
In 1858, City Hospital, a handsomely built but poorly administrated hospital opened, and the years between 1856 and 1867 saw a variety of hospitals treating various maladies such as smallpox, epilepsy and paralysis. Gradually, Blackwells Island had obtained a reputation as the place they put you if you were no longer wanted or considered too sick to return to society. Smallpox, of course, has been eliminated by a vaccine with the final naturally occurring case in 1980.
Ruins of the Smallpox Hospital, built in 1856 on the southern tip of the island, remain inaccessible to the public except on special tours. Visitors can view the “magnificently” ruined castle-like structure from the outside, but the interior has yet to be made safe for the public. Unusually, it is well-lit at night and its ghostly outline can be readily seen from Manhattan Island after dark.
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1/23/24
15 comments
Was this also used for tuberculosis?
Are there any specific plans for it?
AFAIK, the Blackwell house is still on the island, hopefully some work was put into it to preserve it.
And also on Google Earth I see the Streckler Lab bldg. is still there down by the smallpox hospital. Some interesting items were left behind in there when they closed. Hopefully they cleaned it up
I live on the island. The Blackwell house has been cleaned up, restored, and even made ADA compliant. You can visit for free and see photos of RI’s past and present. The Strecker Memorial Lab was cleaned up and cleaned out, and now hosts MTA equipment for the E line even though there’s no stop there (power converter, emergency escape, all that sort of thing. Both are now National Landmarks.
I still remember it as Welfare Island.
The Library of Congress has this Edison video from May 20, 1903, entitled “Panorama of Blackwell Island. It is a wonderful view from the lighthouse on the northern tip that ends just before the Smallpox Hospital.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPbzLYQ7D8A
There is so much more development on the island than I expected to see. Were all the buidlings hospitals? My grandfather was sent to to Goldwater Hospital there in the 60’s. We considered it the last stop. The views of the construction of the Queensboro Bridge are amazing! It’s also interesting that Edison or his company shot this from a boat!
At one time there was a jail on the island also. it closed when Rikers Island opened. I believe it was located on the southern end of the island.
The old jail was built in the 1830’s, from rock that was quarried on the island. It was demolished in 1939 when Rickers Island opened and the site was used to build what came to be known as Coler-Goldwater Specialty Hospital. In turn, it was demolished in March of 2014. and is the site of the new Cornell-Tech
**”Charles Dickens visited the island in the 1840s and delineated the inhumanely harsh conditions of the asylums.”**
Dickens could’ve found harsh conditions at the Waldorf-Astoria…
**”a handsomely built but poorly administrated hospital “**
…and nearly 200 years later…nothing has changed in NYC- except that today’s institutions are never handsomely built…..
Well said, Nunzio!
The smallpox vaccination wasn’t injected like polio or Covid vaccinations. A double-pointed needle was dipped in the smallpox virus (vaccinia), and scratched into the upper arm. This caused a pustule to develop, and later a scab. When the scab fell off it left a scar, which many of us born before 1970 still have. We kids were warned not to pick at the scab, or else it would have to be done over!
Bill, WOW! I was born before 1970 but wouldn’t have guessed I might have received an anti-smallpox inoculation. I know I had always remembered a “double-pointed needle”, the plastic, off-white-ish “handle” for which was reminiscent almost of a shot cigarette holder, for *some* shot I had gotten. And the tips of the needles, in my recollection anyway, were triangle-shaped. If we were given the warning “not to pick at the scab”, it is a miracle if I in fact followed it.
When I was a child I never ever saw any people on Welfare(now Roosevelt) Island.Nothing ever
moved there or were there any signs of ;life.The place seemed to be a big nothing.Surprising that
that they even bothered to give it a name.
I have old photographs of being inside the smallpox building. One time we tried to dig out the entrance to the basement. They should of left that island alone.