11/20/21: Roosevelt Island

Christine has reconnected with a friend from college, Joe Aboulafia, who is moving from Long Island to Roosevelt Island. Joe’s partner of 43 years died last year and Joe has been wanting to move back to the city. They had lived in and around Manhattan but had moved out to Long Island several years ago. Joe decided to rent an apartment on Roosevelt Island. We had arranged to meet Joe at his new apartment and then tour around the island. Unfortunately, Joe called early in the morning to say that he was ill and wasn’t up to meeting us. After a long phone conversation hearing about his challenges in getting furnishings to his apartment and the difficulty in going through everything in his house in preparation for the move, we decided that we would go spend the day on Roosevelt Island anyway and give Joe updates on what we were doing and seeing so he could enjoy our visit vicariously.

We had never been to Roosevelt Island but I certainly did look at the island a lot when Christine was at New York Presbyterian Hospital after her aneurysm rupture. Her room in the neuro ICU had a large picture window looking out across the East River to Roosevelt Island. So off we went for a day of adventure on Roosevelt Island.

We walked up 2nd Ave. to the tram station at 59th St. The tram goes back and forth across the East River suspended from cables.

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The tram car can hold up to 125 passengers and the 2 cars that cross back and forth make about 115 trips per day. It takes only a few minutes to make the crossing. The views are great during the crossing. In the photo below Manhattan is on the left and Roosevelt Island is on the right.

Once on Roosevelt Island we took advantage of the red bus that drives around the island so we could see what there was to explore. This red bus is a free ride around the island used by residents and tourists alike. Roosevelt Island is only 2 miles long and about 800 feet wide but there is a whole lot to explore.

Here’s some information about the island taken from a National Park website. Blackwell’s Island, now known as Roosevelt Island, has a deep connection to disability and incarceration. For much of the early 1900s, New Yorkers nicknamed the island Welfare Island after the asylums, prisons, and almshouses that were built there. While most of the buildings have long since fallen into disrepair, the ruins are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The dilapidated structures are also listed as a New York City Landmark, and they are the only ruins in New York City to be a local Landmark. This unique designation points to the social and historical significance of this island. 

New York City purchased the East River island in 1828. In 1832, a penitentiary was built on the island. This physically isolated prisoners from the city and from the mainland. However, prisoners were not the only inmates on Blackwell’s Island. Nineteenth century Blackwell’s Island was also home to a complex of workhouses, a general hospital, an almshouse, a hospital for “incurables,” and —for a time— a smallpox hospital. At the time, the word “incurables” referred to people with chronic or severe conditions that were not likely to be cured. These individuals, many with mental or physical disabilities, may have had trouble caring for themselves at home. In 1839, seven years after the penitentiary opened, the New York City Lunatic Asylum, first in the city, began accepting patients at Blackwell’s Island. 

Historically, the island was used to isolate those who society did not want to see. In 1973, the island was named after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who lived with polio throughout his life. In renaming the island after President Roosevelt, New York has made strides in honoring disability history. People with disabilities have often been forced into poverty, prisons, or hospitals in our country’s history. Nonetheless, people with disabilities, like President Roosevelt have lived and worked in many places, and they have played an important role in building American history. 

The first place we visited was The Octagon, a luxury apartment complex that was built on the site of the Roosevelt Island Lunatic Asylum. The Octagon tower is an historic building built in 1841 that served as the main entrance to the hospital. The hospital was closed in 1955 and the building fell into decay. The tower, however, has been salvaged and renovated and incorporated into a very swanky luxury apartment complex.

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We went into the lobby of the Octagon and found a bunch of old photos exhibited which added to our education about things on the island.

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We then headed to the northern tip of the island to see the Roosevelt Island lighthouse. Joe had told us about the Girl Puzzle Monument in recognition of Nellie Bly. Bly had gone undercover as a patient in the Lunatic Asylum to learn about the terrible, snake pit conditions and poor treatment of the patients in the asylum. Nellie Bly wrote about what she experienced and saw in a book titled Ten Days in a Mad-House. Bly is an important figure in women’s rights advocacy among many other things. The Girl Puzzle name of the monument comes from an article Bly wrote bearing that title about how divorce affects women and that the divorce laws need to be reformed. Bly had landed her first job at the Pittsburgh Dispatch newspaper after writing a response to a column in the paper, a misogynistic piece titled What Girls are Good For (birthing babies and keeping house) appearing in the Pittsburgh Dispatch newspaper. The editor of the paper was impressed by the rebuttal and offered Nellie Bly, pen name of Elizabeth Jane Cochran, a job.

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Unfortunately, we couldn’t get very close to either the lighthouse or the Girl Puzzle monument due to construction. The lighthouse is being renovated and there were fences up all around the monument. The major pieces of the monument are five, giant seven-foot tall bronze faces representing different women, including a portrait of Nellie Bly. Each of the four other faces are rendered in partial sections to make them appear as puzzle pieces but also to show the depth of emotions of being broken and repaired. There are also 3 large stainless steel spheres within the walkway, representing different stages of Bly’s life and career. I had to take photos through the chain link fence, so the entire monument is not well represented here.

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It was such a nice day that we decided to forego the red bus and walk. Roosevelt Island is a wonderful place. Some 14,000 plus people reside on the island in high rise buildings (mostly on the northern end and central parts of the island), but one gets a very nice neighborhood feeling. What I really liked is the number of green spaces and trees everywhere, especially beautiful sycamore trees. There are parks and playgrounds everywhere. Even though you are amidst tall buildings, it had a communal feeling that was really quite laid back – very different than across the river in midtown Manhattan. The diversity in the residential population was really great with all types of people. Main St. runs through the middle of the island and there is a commercial district, but the feeling still is of a lovely neighborhood. On the northern end of the island near Lighthouse Park is a very large rehab and nursing facility which came about by a merger of two chronic care hospitals that were located there. Although the Coler Rehab and Nursing Care Center looks a bit drab, it apparently has a great reputation and provides good care to its residents.

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We spotted some sculptures in the river during our walk titled the Marriage of Money and Real Estate. It consists of three bronze sculptures: one of a coin being attacked by what seems to be an anthropomorphized moneybag coming out of the mouth of a man in a top hat, one of a house in a skirt being attacked by a lobster with a dollar sign on its face, and one of the house and coin joined in a happy marriage. It’s meant to symbolize the struggle of wealth inequality in the city.

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Joe had made reservations for lunch at a place called Granny Annie’s Bar and Kitchen, and we went there for lunch. The food was very good, but we were seated in a small side room where there was a group of about 8 young women who were very loud. It was impossible for us to carry on our own conversation.

After lunch we headed south and walked through the Cornell Tech campus. What an amazing campus! All new beautiful glass buildings. It is a world-class tech destination. A brochure says this: Cornell Tech is a revolutionary model for graduate education that fuses technology with business and creative thinking. Cornell Tech brings together like-minded faculty, business leaders, tech entrepreneurs and students in a catalytic environment to produce visionary ideas grounded in significant needs that will reinvent the way we live.

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After walking through the tech campus we came to the FDR Hope Memorial.

Christine stopped to talk with two dance performers who were having some photography and filming done. Christine is now on the board of the American Dance Asylum, an organization that helps distribute funding for dance, so of course she wanted to get information about these performers in case there was an opportunity to assist them in acquiring funding.

A little further south we came to the ruins of the small pox hospital. Eventually, the ruins may be renovated. The architect of the hospital was James Renwick, who was the architect for many, many famous buildings including the Smithsonian and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The smallpox hospital was opened in 1856.

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At the southern tip of the island is the FDR Four Freedoms State Park. This commemorates FDR’s 1941 State of the Union address. Roosevelt announced his vision for the world, “a world attainable in our own time and generation,” and founded upon four essential human freedoms: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. I stupidly didn’t take a photo of the park, but below is one I lifted from the internet.

I was too busy looking at the Manhattan skyline and taking photos of it so I never took pictures in the park. In the photo below I got the United Nations, the Empire State Building (needle in the background) and the Chrysler Building.

We finished our day on Roosevelt Island sitting on a bench along the river and just taking in the scenery. We eventually walked back to the tram station and returned to midtown and our hotel. It was a great day of exploration and we both think that Joe will be happy living on Roosevelt Island and hope that he works things out to successfully move into his new apartment. Roosevelt Island is a very interesting place and just a 5-minute tram ride away from Manhattan Island. And we will look forward to visiting Joe there in the future.

And to keep Joe vicariously with us during this wonderful day, I’m posting a photo of us with Joe when we had lunch at Tavern on the Green in November of 2019. He’s actually a foot taller than in this photo where he’s hunched over with us so our heads are kind of lined up. Thanks, Joe, for a great day on Roosevelt Island!

We had an uneventful drive back to Binghamton and returned home early afternoon on Sunday, Nov. 21. It’s always nice to be back home. This is likely our last adventure until next spring. We’re scheduled for a riverboat cruise from Amsterdam to Switzerland, but with the reemergence of COVID in Europe and lock downs returning in many countries, I’m a bit skeptical that we’ll actually go. This trip was canceled last April due to COVID. If we go we hope after the riverboat to do some touring in Italy and then end up in Malta. Time will tell if this will happen, but if it does, you’ll read about it here.

Have a wonderful holiday season, dear readers!