little islands in New York City

[gusl]

Have you ever noticed the little islands off of New York City?

A photographer's photographs

What do people do with this land? How many people commute to the city from their isolated island property?

Comments

[krasnoludek.livejournal.com]

I can tell you about several of the islands listed on:

http://www.cooper.edu/art/nyphoto/osnki/cops.htm

First off, many of these islands are small: you wouldn't be able to build more than a dozen houses or less on them. For example, Ellis Island basically has the historic immigrant processing building, which is the size of a large administrative building, a maintenance building or two, and not too much land beyond that. So most of these islands are uninhabited or just have one building that serves some municipal purpose. The ones I know from the list are:

5. Ward's Island and 6. Randall's Island are pretty big islands right next to each other. The Tri-borough Bridge passes over them and has an exit to get down to them. They used to have some warehouses (the final scene in The French Connection occurs here) and an old athletic facility. There was talk of building a new stadium on these islands; I'm not sure if that idea ever went through.

9. Riker's Island. This houses Riker's Prison. It was a pretty common practice to put prisons on small islands (e.g. Alcatraz) because the geography helps prevent escape.

10. Roosevelt Island. This is by far the biggest island listed and it has lots of apartment buildings. There is a tramway to Manhattan, a bridge to Queens and a subway stop connecting it to the rest of NYC.

11. Governor's Island. This island used to house the Governor's house and also some private residences and was connected by ferry to Manhattan. But sometime in the late 90's (while I was in high school), the city forced all the private residents to move off the island, so I guess it's purely municipal now.

12. Liberty Island. Has the Statue of Liberty and nothing else. Connected to Manhattan and Jersey City by ferry.

13. Ellis Island. Already mentioned this above. Same ferry connections as Liberty Island.

20. Coney Island. Has the famous amusement park, a once-popular beach, and residences. As far as I know it's so close to Brooklyn that you don't even realize it's quite an island driving onto it.

26. Plum Island. I don't know much about this island, except that it is not the government island of the same name. That island is at the other end of Long Island and has a high-security animal disease research facility.

For more, the Wikipedia page seems like a good place for information.