Roosevelt Island

You are approaching a place that has undergone one of the most radical transformations in New York City. Before it became the residential community you see today, this long, narrow strip of land in the East River was known for over a century as a place of confinement. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it served as a site for prisons, almshouses, and asylums, earning it a reputation that led many New Yorkers to view it with dread. The island was officially called Blackwells Island for the family that owned it, and later it was renamed Welfare Island to distance the area from its history of incarceration and institutionalization.