Monday! I haven't thought about the insane asylum on Roosevelt Island for a long time...
As you can see by Itzl's concerned look, this group gives Kossacks a safe place to check in, a daily diary where we can let people know we are alive, doing OK, and not affected by such things as heat, blizzards, floods, wild fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, power outages, earthquakes, or other such things that could keep us off DKos. It also allows us to find other Kossacks nearby for in-person checks when other methods of communication fail - a buddy system. If you're not here, or anywhere else on DKos, and there are adverse conditions in your area (floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, earthquakes etc.), we and your buddy are going to check up on you. If you are going to be away from your computer for a day or a week, let us know here. We care!
IAN is a great group to join, and a good place to learn to write diaries. Drop one of us a Kosmail and ask to be added to the Itzl Alert Network anytime! We all share the publishing duties, and we welcome everyone who reads IAN to write diaries for the group! Every member is an editor, so anyone can take a turn when they have something to say, photos and music to share, a cause to promote or news!
We do have a diary schedule. But, when you are ready to write that diary, either post in thread or send FloridaSNMOM a Kosmail with the date. If you need someone to fill in, ditto. FloridaSNMOM is here on and off through the day usually from around 9:30 or 10 am eastern to around 11 pm eastern.
Monday:
BadKitties
Tuesday:
ejoanna
Wednesday:
Caedy
Thursday:
art ah zen
Friday:
FloridaSNMOM
Saturday:
Most Awesome Nana
Sunday:
loggersbrat
A little back story: When I moved back to New York City in 1989, I decided to try real estate for a while and see if I liked it. I had worked for a money manager in Boston, but wanted to do something different. I got my license through Marymount Manhattan College, and went to work for J.I. Sopher.
Sopher was huge, and basically the bottom of the barrel :) He owned a LOT of apartment buildings, all over Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Roosevelt Island. I was a floating on-site agent, which meant that I went all over the city and Brooklyn. I sat in a model apartment, first with an experienced agent, then, much later, on my own, and showed rental apartments.
So one day I was told to report to Roosevelt Island. Sopher had built two huge apartment buildings. I said, "Where the hell is that?" Turns out that it is in the middle of the East River. I did like taking the tram, and later a subway station opened up. Sopher, not being entirely aboveboard, advertised the apartments as being on the Upper East Side. Uh...no, they weren't. I hated telling people that they could either swim, take the tram, or ride the subway.
The apartments were generously sized and reasonably priced. A "junior 4," basically a one-bedroom with an alcove, was $1400 a month. We rented them all in a rather short period of time.
The island was fascinating. The bus from the tram took us past several abandoned buildings. I haven't been back there in over 20 years, but here's some history:
There isn’t a lot that remains of the old New York City Lunatic Asylum on Roosevelt Island– just the administrative building called “The Octagon”, which has since been remodeled. The refurbished portion of the Kirkbride pays homage to the woebegone times of big asylums and high aspirations for treating the mentally ill. It also stands as a sentinel to mark the historic past of the building that once stood in place of the new development.
Roosevelt Island wasn’t always called Roosevelt Island. It started out as Blackwell’s Island and was later called Welfare island. Though, its original name– Blackwell’s Island– was due to the fact it was owned at the time by James and Elizabeth Blackwell. They sold the property to James L. Bell in 1823 for $30,000, but on January 12, 1825 James Bell expired and the property was awarded back to the Blackwells. Once again they sold the property– this time on July 18, 1828 to the City of New York for $32,500 for the purpose of erecting charitable and corrective institutions.
Map of Blackwell Island
A Map of Blackwell Island as it would have appeared in the 1880's.
Blackwell's Island
New York wasted no time taking advantage of the island. That same year they spent just under $17,000 to build a prison on the south end of the island. At the opposite end of the island, construction of the New York Lunatic Asylum began. Although the asylum was designed to be a state-of-the-art institution based on the then prominent Kirkbride Plan, it was never to be. Financial constraints prevented the complete asylum from being built and the two wings that were built immediately proved insufficient to house the New York City’s insane. The building, which opened in 1839, was quickly overrun and its patients were “abandoned to the tender mercies of thieves and prostitutes” as staffing needs were filled by convicts from the nearby penitentiary.
Octogon Stairs
The Original interior staircase, second floor of the Octagon as it would have appeared in May 1970, before being restored.
Gorgeous stairs
Read more
Even more history:
The asylum swiftly entered the public imagination. Charles Dickens, on his tour of America, visited the asylum and found “…everything had a lounging, listless, madhouse air, which was very painful. The moping idiot, cowering down with long disheveled hair; the gibbering maniac, with his hideous laugh and pointed finger; the vacant eye, the fierce wild face, the gloomy picking of the hands and lips, and munching of the nails: there they were all, without disguise, in naked ugliness and horror.”
Part of the asylum was lost in an inferno in 1858. One can only imagine the pandemonium of evacuating mental patients without the modern medications and restraints of today. And the sounds of the blaze mixed with the shouts and howling of the patients.
It was swiftly rebuilt but the conditions were no better. Intrepid reporter Nellie Bly then steps into the story at this time, in a move that would inspire budding Geraldo Rivera’s well into the future. In 1887, already well known for evocative articles on social reform, Bly took an assignment for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World newspaper to enter the asylum disguised as a patient. (Why some actress like Charleze Theron has not played her in a film is quite beyond me.)
Horrors of Roosevelt Island
Metropolitan Hospital, with the Octagon
Further reading, great pictures:
Atlas Obscura
Enjoy :) Hope that everyone has a wonderful Monday! I am off to the doctor, after I check the mail to see if the health account debit cards have arrived. Grrr.