North Brother Island, East River
Coordinates: 40°47′54″N 73°53′54″W / 40.798266°N 73.898424°W
North and South Brother Islands are a pair of small islands located in New York City's East River between the Bronx and Rikers Island. North Brother Island was once the site of a hospital, but is now uninhabited and designated as a bird sanctuary. Until 1964, South Brother Island was part of Queens County (within Long Island City, beginning in 1870), but it is now part of Bronx County. It had long been privately owned, but it was purchased by the city in 2007.
According to the New York City Parks Department, which oversees the islands, North Brother Island has about 20 acres (8.1 ha) of land, and South Brother Island about 6 acres (2.4 ha).
Both North Brother Island and South Brother Island were claimed by the Dutch West India Company in 1614 and both were originally named "De Gesellen", translated as "the companions" in English.
The northern of the islands was uninhabited until 1885, when Riverside Hospital moved there from Blackwell's Island (now known as Roosevelt Island). Riverside Hospital was founded in the 1850s as the Smallpox Hospital to treat and isolate victims of that disease. Its mission eventually expanded to other quarantinable diseases, with the most recent being the Tuberculosis Pavilion, which was built in 1943, and was almost immediately obsolete.
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