When people used to contract highly contagious diseases one thing that would happen in major cities would be they would isolate them. That is exactly the story with North Brother Island in New York, and you’re not allowed to go there.
If you’ve ever been on a boat tour around the state of New York you know there are a lot of small islands up and down the Hudson river and in the various bodies of water we have throughout Upstate New York. New York City is no exception and is home to some pretty famous islands. Ellis, Liberty, and Staten just to name a few. Even Manhattan is an island.
Did you know that there are islands in and around that area that are forbidden? Yes, as in you’re not allowed to be there. That’s the case with this particular island that used to be where many sick patients would be taken.
North Brother Island
North Brother Island is one of two small islands that sit in the East River and is near the Bronx. This island was used as a hospital to quarantine people with highly contagious diseases. The Riverside hospital was built there in the 1880s and it’s where they would send folks who had things like typhoid fever and tuberculosis back in the day. It was a well known place i the early 1900s when the polio epidemic broke out. You can imagine there must be quite a few bodies buried around that island as those diseases took the lives of so many…