The Haunting Abandoned Island In The Middle Of NYC

You’d never believe that there was an abandoned island in the heart of New York City, would you?

Well, there is. In a city where real estate prices and the underlying cost of land are astronomically high, there’s one place where the developers still can’t tread – North Brother Island.

North Brother Island has an interesting history as a sanitarium, a rehab center for typhoid fever and smallpox victims and a housing site for veterans. But today, it is being slowly reclaimed by the roots of the eerie island as an important bird-breeding habitat.

The River That Isn’t A River

The East River of New York is where you’ll find our abandoned island but what you may not know is that the East River isn’t a river at all. It’s a tidal estuary and is purely salt rather than fresh water.

It runs from Long Island Sound at its northern tip and stops at Upper New York Bay at the southernmost point. For a long period of time it was the heart of the maritime trade in New York and it was once the busiest sea lane in the city. This is, of course, no longer the case and the East River is far less busy today.