Daily News du lieu suivant : New York, New York • 413

DAILY NEWS, MONDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1967 34 (WEST CHANNEL) EAST RIVER N.Y.C. FIRE DEPT. SCHOOL AREA I WELFARE ISLAND I GOLDWATER MEMORIAL Church of the I HOSP. AREA Episcopal Church Central 1 LTEIevotor Good Shepherd Synagogue (ABANDONED BlDGS.) i i 1 1 I Storehow Usorehouse Nur Residence I i i I (Site of I'm met' Cify Prison) a i I i wr iu nrinkin rsorarMi N.Y. U.

Primate Colony I 1 1 i m-t l3 I SnnM. (ABANDONED BLDGS.) JQLLDT i Oriainol I I I Church of the Staff House' I Blackwell Hous i I Sacred Heart i I WELFARE ISLAND BRIDGE 111 FORMER CITY HOME AREA STOREHOUSE AREA QVEEXSBORO METROPOLITAN HOSP. AREA I I I. FORMER CITY HOSP. AREA BIRD S.

COLER HOSP. AREA BRIDGE I I (EAST CHANNEL) EAST RIVER I NEWS map by Ed Gallagher What's on Welfare Island? Map locates existing structures (black) and abandoned sites and buildings. i 3 I yw I I ffJ'Mg I 1 3 I Last week the name of Laurance Rockefeller was publicly tied to Mayor Lindsay's plans for the development of Welfare Island. Although no specific program is before the City Planning Commission, the mayor's is but the most recent of many proposals for turning Welfare Island from what it is into something else. By car and on foot, THE NEWS has explored the island to learn what it is today, what it has been, and what it might be tomorrow.

First of two articles By KITTY HANSON qpHIS IS WELFARE ISLAND, Man--- hattan's unloved stepchild, abused, ignored and abandoned. It is almost an invisible part of the city, geographically tied to Manhattan, yet isolated; doomed to be constantly looked upon but never fully seen. Few people ever visit here, few know what it holds, yet nearly all New Yorkers respond to r-1 JjUJtMJ ifTTTTf I l' DAIIXS NEWS SPECIAL FEATURE the island presence with a feeling of unease and distaste that has its roots in cen Ntwb pnotos ov (George manson From old Metropolitan Hospital looking west are Manhattan's luxurious apartment buildings. turies of scandal and horror. Welfare Island today is a ghostly relic of a grim, malodorous past.

It is also probably one of the most expensive lots in history. While Manhattan across the river struggles for breathing room and living space, here are 141 acres of unused land and empty buildings. While the city pants for parks and greenery, here are acres of sycamore groves and wild honeysuckle, of maples and ailanthus trees. A Blur of Green in the River And while the city wrestles with real estate costs to find a corner for its schools and campuses, here are acres of quiet walks and serene countryside. To motorists on the East River Drive, or to riders on the Queensboro Bridge, Welfare Island is merely a blur of green in the middle of the East River.

To apartment dwellers in the skyscrapers from 50th St. to 86th, it is an eyesore, a littered front yard of unkempt trees and rampant weeds. To tourists on the sightseeing boats It is pointed out as the island of where New York City cares for its aging and chronically ill. But many of those who are sent there have, with a kind of hopeless humor, turned the island's name around: They call it Farewell Island. It was after the city of New York bought the island from the Blackwell family in 1828 (total price, for use as a poorhouse and place of punishment that the name Blackwells Island become synonymous with hopelessness and fear.

For more than a scandalous century, this narrow, two-mile outcropping of rock in the East River served as the dumping ground for all the unfortunates of the city the poor, the wicked, the mad and the ill. It was New York's Alcatraz, pesthouse and Isle of Lepers. To Blackwells Island, the hospitah sent their incurables, to languish and die in crowded filthy firetraps bearing such names as Smallpox Hospital, Scarlet Fever Hospital, Tuberculosis Hospital, Paralytic Hospital. To Blackwells Island, the city consigned its insane, to be tortured and tormented until a girl reporter known as Nelly Bly tricked a doctor into committing her to the asylum. Her accounts of its horrors stirred the city to remedial action, and started a nationwide reform in the treatment of the insane.

And to the City Penitentiary on Blackwells Island, the city sent its criminals. Built in 1832, its forbidding walls and gun turrets looked down upon 103 years of degeneracy, violence and corruption. Prisoners were murdered, riots were common, escape attempts were frequent (and often successful). Dope was flown in by carrier pigeon. While hundreds of prisoners were chained to chairs under dripping pipes or left to lie in their cells with raging fevers, a privileged few ran the prison and lived in baronial splendor.

They ate gourmet foods, dressed in silk, and regularly slipped off to the mainland for a night on the town. William Marcy (Boss) Tweed left his mark on the City Penitentiary in 1874, when he was held briefly there after being convicted of looting the city of more than $200 million. He promptly ordered the high narrow window of his cell replaced by a spacious 6x8-foot picture window. Facing south, it gave him an excellent view of the city he had so successfully robbed. The penitentiary was demolished in 1935, but the pall cast by its memory seems to linger in the stillness that shrouds the island today.

At the southern end of the island, on the old prison-site, stands the Goldwater Memorial Hospital, one of the two hospitals on the island. The other is Bird S. Coler, located at the northern end. The chronically ill and handicapped, the doctors and nurses and clerics who tend them are nearly the only residents of the island. South of Bird S.

Coler stand the cavernous stone halls of the old Metropolitan Hospital (which moved to the mainland in 1955). The huge stone blocks were quarried on the island itself, but the quarry now lies beneath the Central Nurses Residence, just north of the Queensboro Bridge. A Ghosf Town of Empty Streets A little further south are the fenced-in 10 acres of the Fire Department's Training School, and still further south are another 10 acres or more of abandoned buildings also used in training fire fighters. These are the buildings of the old City Home where the city once dumped its aged and indigent. Today it is a ghost town of blind windows and empty streets.

The ruins of the old City Hospital crumble on the island's southernmost tip. On high ground near the center of the island stands the old Blackwell farmhouse, more than a century old. A few steps west of its front entrance you are within sight of Manhattan's luxurious apartment towers and the shining expanse of New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. The muted roar of the-city drifts across the west channel, a deeply-murmuring undertone to the sounds of the island's life. Within minutes and view of the city, you can stand knee-deep in grass and listen to the wail of a siren across the river.

The sound blends with the sighing of wind in the trees, the shrill orchestration of crickets, and the rustle of unseen wildlife in the fallen leaves. This is Welfare Island ghost town, vacant lot, woodland and mausoleum for unhappy, memories. Tomorrow: What doe the fataro '(' tJ. VfMTV The island's quiet walks and serene countryside, or is sharp contrast to -the lusting city around it. 1 'J".