Our little group of urban explorers snuck onto Brother Island 15 or so years ago. I doubt you can get anywhere near it today. Fascinating, eerie, sad place. We looked around, didn't touch anything, take anything (except pics), or leave anything behind - those were our rules.

Two members of our group were very avid birders so we spent a lot of time exploring the grounds. It was so overgrown with vegetation, so thick in some spots we had to hack through it. I ended up with the worst case of poison ivy I ever had in my life. I was covered in it, it was everywhere, and I mean everywhere. I had to be hospitalized it was so bad. So I guess you can say I broke the rules by leaving with poison ivy. I often wondered if the spirits of the poor souls who had been confined there were getting some kind of revenge for my trespassing.

Jamieboy: Our little group of urban explorers snuck onto Brother Island 15 or so years ago. I doubt you can get anywhere near it today. Fascinating, eerie, sad place. We looked around, didn't touch anything, take anything (except pics), or leave anything behind - those were our rules.

Two members of our group were very avid birders so we spent a lot of time exploring the grounds. It was so overgrown with vegetation, so thick in some spots we had to hack through it. I ended up with the worst case of poison ivy I ever had in my life. I was covered in it, it was everywhere, and I mean everywhere. I had to be hospitalized it was so bad. So I guess you can say I broke the rules by leaving with poison ivy. I often wondered if the spirits of the poor souls who had been confined there were getting some kind of revenge for my trespassing.

No, it was just you smashing through poison ivy.

Q: What did the leper say to the hooker?
A: Keep the tip.

/Thank you, try the veal.

All the leprosy jokes just reminded me of my high school music teacher... he used to sing his own little version of the Beatles' "Yesterday."

Leprosy... there are pieces falling off of me... I'm not half the man I used to be...

/Wish I could remember the rest
//That man was the only good thing about high school

Amazing pictures. I have a weird love for old buildings, and these have a lot of character. Thanks, subby!

FTFA: Closed in 1963, it is now a haunting haunted labyrinth of crumbling ruins.

Here's a better set of images from that spot:

Link

batcookie: ryarger: batcookie: Tsar_Bomba1: Man that Typhoid Mary was quite the biatch...

Hey I'm jumping to Mary's defense on this one. To call her a biatch would imply that her spreading of disease was intentional. She was just ignorant as to the concept of being a carrier - I mean why should she believe it's her causing the sickness? She isn't sick, she has no symptoms. She was a poor Irish maid, it's not like she could afford the education, and keep in mind that this was hardly common knowledge in her time. Pasteur's germ theory only came to light 20 years or so before she was born, and at this time there were still plenty of people from the lower classes who didn't buy into it because it was something they couldn't see or substatiate (ironic considering that these people were often so very religious, but I digress...) Add to that the fact that she was a carrier without symptoms, and she thought all those farkers were stupid for blaming her.

While I do agree that her life does need to be taken in context with her time, I have to point out that a mere 20 years before I was born, man had not set foot on the moon, Eniac was the bees knees and no one had heard of AIDS.

That doesn't mean that I have an excuse for staring at my iPhone like Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.

You should see my mom at the computer.

But I ha- wait... on, under, bent over, between the printer cart and the old left over stack of floppies, *with* the old left over stack of floppies

Huh, you're right, I've never actually seen your mom *at* the computer.

batcookie: I LOVE modern ruins! I wanna go so badly! Now I have three choices for my next road trip.... Mutter museum, Centralia, PA, or this place. And dude wtf, I'm a New Yorker, how did I not know of this place?! I ought to kick myself in the head for such unforgivable ignorance.

I don't know about this leper colony deal, but between the other two I'd definitely pick the Mutter Museum over Centralia. There's not much going on with Centralia other than some crumbling concrete curbs and driveways and streets that are now half-overgrown, and there's a whole lot of driving through nothing to get there. Occasionally you'll see smoke or steam from one of the underground fires - I was lucky enough to see this in the summer of 2009, driving through - but the last few times, I didn't even see that.

I found the near-ruin of the surrounding coal towns (Mount Carmel, Girardville, Gilberton - the last two still shantytowns) much more fascinating. And occasionally you come across gems like these in that area:



Happy hunting!

Didn't I just see this the other day?

But I just can't get past the ignorance. This was apparently not a "leper colony" per se. This was an isolation hospital for many different types of infectious diseases. Then, the Dail Fail mentions the "typhoid virus". Typhoid fever is not caused by a virus, it is caused by a species of Salmonella. Also, the other linked paged is labeled "typhus" - which is an entirely different disease, caused by Rickettsia, and transmitted by lice/fleas/ticks.

/Micro Geek hates ignorance.

batcookie: I LOVE modern ruins! I wanna go so badly! Now I have three choices for my next road trip.... Mutter museum, Centralia, PA, or this place. And dude wtf, I'm a New Yorker, how did I not know of this place?! I ought to kick myself in the head for such unforgivable ignorance.

You should totally check out egmont key in Florida. Only accessable by boat, it has ruins from the Spanish-American war as well as a slightly more modern ghost town. There's never more than a dozen or so people at a time on the whole island - last time I went it was just me, the ferryman, and the park rangers. With every major storm more of the island sinks into the ocean (they do try to slow it with anti-erosion plant life and such, but it doesn't seem to be working so well), so it's one of those 'last chance to see' places.

...Don't forget about Hart Island: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart_Island,_New_York

"...More than 850,000 dead are buried there-approximately 2,000 a year. One third of them are infants and stillborn babies - which has been reduced from one half since children's health insurance began to cover all pregnant women in New York State.[16][17][18][19] In 2005 there were 1,419 burials in the potter's field on Hart Island, including 826 adults, 546 infants and stillborn babies, and 47 burials of dismembered body parts.[10] The dead are buried in trenches. Babies are placed in coffins of various sizes, and are stacked five coffins high and usually twenty coffins across. Adults are placed in larger pine boxes placed according to size and are stacked three coffins high and two coffins across.[16] Burial records on microfilm at the Municipal Archives in Manhattan indicate that babies and adults were buried together in mass graves up until 1913 when the trenches became separate in order to facilitate the more common disinterment of adults. The potter's field is also used to dispose of amputated body parts, which are placed in boxes labeled "limbs". Ceremonies have not been conducted at the burial site since the 1950s, and no individual markers are set except for the first child to die of AIDS in New York City who was buried in isolation.[20][21] In the past, burial trenches were re-used after 25-50 years, allowing for sufficient decomposition of the remains. Presently, historic buildings are being torn down to make room for new burials.[22]"

That place actually got a movie, and a pretty decent one at that, though I'll be damned if I can find the IMDB entry for it.

From article comments:

"They didn't mention the last four residents who were gamblers, that were found there years later. They were unable to get out after a game of poker, as they all threw in their hands."

"North Brother Island was also witness to America's worst disaster until the 9/11 attacks - the 1904 fire onboard the passenger ship, General Slocum which killed 1,021 people, mainly women and children on a church outing."

Wrong, at least 1500 died in the Sultana disaster, some estimates run up to 2000. It's unfortunate that with all the attention given to other various tragedies that the worst maritime disaster in US history has been so thoroughly forgotten.

You hear about the leper who made his living as a gigolo? he was doing well until business fell off.

Rat's daily Clavenesque history lesson brought to him by ElBarto79 and the numbers 1865 and 1500.

© I shall now go forth and amaze my friends

batcookie: All the leprosy jokes just reminded me of my high school music teacher... he used to sing his own little version of the Beatles' "Yesterday."

Leprosy... there are pieces falling off of me... I'm not half the man I used to be...

/Wish I could remember the rest
//That man was the only good thing about high school

I just blew my nose. There is goes, across the waaaaaay...

batcookie: I LOVE modern ruins! I wanna go so badly! Now I have three choices for my next road trip.... Mutter museum, Centralia, PA, or this place. And dude wtf, I'm a New Yorker, how did I not know of this place?! I ought to kick myself in the head for such unforgivable ignorance.

Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago. (new window)

The Baker Hotel (new window)

© I always found this place fascinating too

Sorry but those three diseases were bacterium not virus.

AtlanticCoast63: That place actually got a movie, and a pretty decent one at that, though I'll be damned if I can find the IMDB entry for it.

It was featured in a movie starring Brittany Murphy called Don't Say A Word. Not sure if that's the one you're thinking of...

/thought it was an awful movie

batcookie: ryarger: batcookie: Tsar_Bomba1: Man that Typhoid Mary was quite the biatch...

Hey I'm jumping to Mary's defense on this one. To call her a biatch would imply that her spreading of disease was intentional. She was just ignorant as to the concept of being a carrier - I mean why should she believe it's her causing the sickness? She isn't sick, she has no symptoms. She was a poor Irish maid, it's not like she could afford the education, and keep in mind that this was hardly common knowledge in her time. Pasteur's germ theory only came to light 20 years or so before she was born, and at this time there were still plenty of people from the lower classes who didn't buy into it because it was something they couldn't see or substatiate (ironic considering that these people were often so very religious, but I digress...) Add to that the fact that she was a carrier without symptoms, and she thought all those farkers were stupid for blaming her.

While I do agree that her life does need to be taken in context with her time, I have to point out that a mere 20 years before I was born, man had not set foot on the moon, Eniac was the bees knees and no one had heard of AIDS.

That doesn't mean that I have an excuse for staring at my iPhone like Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.

You should see my mom at the computer.

You should see my parents using an iPhone. The touchscreen never works for them yet it works better than any of my prior phones. I don't understand.

This would be a lot better if it weren't on Daily Mail. Their writing style and captions make me want to wring someone's neck.

For example, why does every caption have a word or phrase followed by a colon, and then more words that reiterate what was stated before the colon? And it's not just in this article, either. It's in EVERY article on Daily Mail.

And then the writing style... Ugh. If they're not sensationalizing, then they're talking down to their audience. Sometimes it's both.

The pictures are excellent (even the whole series has been in other publications, and this is basically a re-print of what they did) but Daily Mail is written like a newspaper for toddlers and mentally-challenged adults, and I'm sure it's not the journalist's fault. As far as I can tell, the editors WANT that style and the writers have to dumb-down their work to match it. Who is the target audience for the Daily Mail in the U.K., anyway?

Oh, and North Brother Island looks like Detroit.

Here is my more detailed blog entry about NBI, written after I visited the island 5 years ago. I can honestly say that visiting NBI the way that I did ranks as one of the stupidist things I've ever done. I took a canoe from a shoreline 300 yards away, the day after a terrible ice storm. The area is known as Hell's Neck because the tide from the river and the tide from the bay mix here that it creates horrible currents and eddys. If I had gone in the water I'd have had hypothermia and died before I could reach the shore.

My favorite find there? a 1950's phone book. Everything was KL5-XXXX. Unfortunately it was in such condition that you touched a page and it disintegrated in your fingers so I couldn't take it. Did take a whole bunch of kitchen purchase orders I found in the kitchen though.

I should mention that people use the word disaster a lot, but the fire and crash of the General Slocum truly defines the word disaster. The lifejackets were of such poor quality and so far out of date that they were basically saw dust, which dragged people to their deaths when they hit the water. This is a really good book about the incident, and it also talks a lot about the island as well.

jjwars1: batcookie: ryarger: batcookie: Tsar_Bomba1: Man that Typhoid Mary was quite the biatch...

Hey I'm jumping to Mary's defense on this one. To call her a biatch would imply that her spreading of disease was intentional. She was just ignorant as to the concept of being a carrier - I mean why should she believe it's her causing the sickness? She isn't sick, she has no symptoms. She was a poor Irish maid, it's not like she could afford the education, and keep in mind that this was hardly common knowledge in her time. Pasteur's germ theory only came to light 20 years or so before she was born, and at this time there were still plenty of people from the lower classes who didn't buy into it because it was something they couldn't see or substatiate (ironic considering that these people were often so very religious, but I digress...) Add to that the fact that she was a carrier without symptoms, and she thought all those farkers were stupid for blaming her.

While I do agree that her life does need to be taken in context with her time, I have to point out that a mere 20 years before I was born, man had not set foot on the moon, Eniac was the bees knees and no one had heard of AIDS.

That doesn't mean that I have an excuse for staring at my iPhone like Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.

You should see my mom at the computer.

You should see my parents using an iPhone. The touchscreen never works for them yet it works better than any of my prior phones. I don't understand.

That's part of Apple's Elder-Blocker™ technology for iPhone™. Their touch screens can measure skin density, dryness, and wrinkles to determine the age of the user, and will refuse to work for anyone over a specific age, thus requiring a trip to the Apple Store™ to see a Genius™ who will then sell them an iPad™.

Opening in 2013, the Trump Leper -- Island getaway hotel and luxury condos in New York City with a Whole Foods on the ground floor.

Wow, Dark Meadow, live edition!

http://www.thedarkmeadowgame.com/gallery/

TommyymmoT: TugboatTerry: "Patrolled by armed coastguard"?
No. It's not. I Sail past North Brother often. There's no dedicated patrol. Sure, coasties will zip past the island on their way to.somewhere else, but nobody is tasked woth guarding NYC's precious rubble. Even of they do see you, well, its not against the law to paddle around the island (Until they are out of sight)

Isn't Rikers just a stone's throw away though?
Doesn't Rikers still have the prison barge in that area also?

Yes, Rikers is due south of the island, LGA south of that. There are oil terminals north of the island. You could slip between north and souh brothe, there's aboht 200' seperating them.
That bejng said, here is a message from all tugboats, barges, and ships working new york harbor:
QUIT KAYAKING IN NEW YORK HARBOR!
We seriously almost kill you eveytime we come near you. It's not our fault, we can't stop or turn quickly as we are at least four hundred feet long and weigh several thousand tons

Instead of spending money patrolling the waters to keep people away, we ought to be charging people $100 a pop to visit (I'd pony up), plus require that they purchase rescue insurance and rent a transmitter that they are to use if they become injured or trapped.

This thread needs MOR HDR!!!

BizarreMan: ElBarto79: "North Brother Island was also witness to America's worst disaster until the 9/11 attacks - the 1904 fire onboard the passenger ship, General Slocum which killed 1,021 people, mainly women and children on a church outing."

Wrong, at least 1500 died in the Sultana disaster, some estimates run up to 2000. It's unfortunate that with all the attention given to other various tragedies that the worst maritime disaster in US history has been so thoroughly forgotten.

I was gonna come and say exactly this thing. Until I moved to Vicksburg in 94 I had never even heard about the Sultana. We went looking into it when we started seeing all the paintings of the explosion all over town.

I had never heard of the Sultana until I did a research project on it during grad school. No one in class had ever heard of it either. The remains of the ship still lie where they sank, covered over with 30 feet of mud in an area that is now apparently a soybean field. It is about as unceremonious an end as you can imagine for a terrible tragedy.

Still nicer than my friend's apartment in West Philly

ryarger: batcookie: ryarger: batcookie: Tsar_Bomba1: Man that Typhoid Mary was quite the biatch...

Hey I'm jumping to Mary's defense on this one. To call her a biatch would imply that her spreading of disease was intentional. She was just ignorant as to the concept of being a carrier - I mean why should she believe it's her causing the sickness? She isn't sick, she has no symptoms. She was a poor Irish maid, it's not like she could afford the education, and keep in mind that this was hardly common knowledge in her time. Pasteur's germ theory only came to light 20 years or so before she was born, and at this time there were still plenty of people from the lower classes who didn't buy into it because it was something they couldn't see or substatiate (ironic considering that these people were often so very religious, but I digress...) Add to that the fact that she was a carrier without symptoms, and she thought all those farkers were stupid for blaming her.

While I do agree that her life does need to be taken in context with her time, I have to point out that a mere 20 years before I was born, man had not set foot on the moon, Eniac was the bees knees and no one had heard of AIDS.

That doesn't mean that I have an excuse for staring at my iPhone like Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.

You should see my mom at the computer.

But I ha- wait... on, under, bent over, between the printer cart and the old left over stack of floppies, *with* the old left over stack of floppies

Huh, you're right, I've never actually seen your mom *at* the computer.

Well, Mary was Irish, and in her day, they WERE out to blame everything on the Irish, specifically the low-end working-class that bred like rabbits. And in that era, sure, germ theory HAD been created, but at the same time, the bulk of "science" was into unnecessary enemas, racial eugenics, and the absolute conviction that male masturbation caused most diseases, while paradoxically maintaining that women needed to be masturbated regularly by a physician to cure female problems, all documented with logical conviction of medical journals, citing of evidence, and the urgency that foolish conventional wisdom be discarded in favor of this new, fashionable scientific thing.

And Mary herself had never had Typhoid Fever.

So, the idea that this was all a scheme concocted to smear the Irish with fake pop science was hardly irrational.

I just have to say, I love these threads, because they inevitably expand my knowledge of both modern ruins and the disasters surrounding them.

/morbid fascination

The real question here is why a chunk of real estate, worth millions at least, is lying idle in the middle of New York City.

Something is missing here, it does not make sense.