Randall's & Ward's Island: New York's Dumping Ground

Today, I took my bike, ½ sleeve of graham crackers, and my camera to explore one of New York's dozen islands: Randall’s/Ward’s Island.


This island, formerly two separate islands, is now joined by a landfill and located smack in the middle of the East River. It is separated from Manhattan by the river’s west channel, from Queens by the Hell Gate (a narrow tidal straight and site of the 1904 General Slocum ferry disaster that—up until 9/11—was the worst disaster in NYC history), and from the Bronx by the Bronx Kill (another narrow tidal straight that connects the Harlem River to the East River). Rikers Island, LaGuardia, the NY Post processing facility, and a major ConEd station are just on the northernly and easternly shores.

Nuts and Bolts look like Braille. Don't you think?

Below, sunbathers lie in the shadow of the Triborough Bridge in Astoria Park.

Signs, signs everywhere!

What isn’t on Randall’s Island? Well, residential housing or stores of any kind don’t exist there, but it used to be called “a dumping ground for everything unwanted in New York City.”

Here’s what is on the Island today:

-Manhattan Psychiatric Center (formerly the Manhattan State Hospital/NY City Asylum for the Insane)

-Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center (for the criminally insane) -255 acres of city parks (thank you, Robert Moses)

-Dozens of Athletic Fields (inhabited by multitudes of Intramural Athletes)

-FDNY Training Academy

-Sewage Treatment Plant

-Random homeless people/junkies lurking in the bushes

-A horse stable

-Many, many families BBQ-ing to the sounds of Reggeaton

-And, a little history research taught me that in the 1880s, hundreds of thousands of bodies were relocated to Ward’s Island from Manhattan cemeteries. Nice!

Above, a Latin family gathers in their minivans around a cluster of tress, just like a pride of lions on the mightly Serengeti. The Hells Gate, the Triborough, and the CitiBank building loom in the background.

Above, this dog was amazing. He loyaly retrieved that huge, huge stick, that his owners kept throwing into the East River, at least a dozen times. Every time he trotted by, I chuckled. Heh heh heh...