On a cold Christmas Eve in the year 1993, drivers in Midtown Manhattan who were crawling

along the FDR Drive saw a strange sight in the East River, an illuminated old castle

seeming to rise from out of the water itself, like an apparition from a fairy tale.

With bazed in flood light, the haunting ruins stood in stone-cold gray.

Shadows of large, vacated rooms behind its cathedral-like windows, a blanket of ivy,

imbuing it with a green glow.

This deteriorating building sat surrounded in total darkness on the southern end of the

narrow island separating Manhattan from Queens, a place once synonymous with human suffering.

In fact, within this historic crumbling structure, hundreds had died of one of the 19th

century's most terrible diseases.

But it was also a place where thousands had trained to care for those with the greatest

need.

Perhaps on that night, somebody on the FDR Drive fought to themselves, how is this dilapidated,

old ruin still standing at all?

The Barry Boyz Episode 389, the ruins of Roosevelt Island.

Hi there, welcome to the Barry Boyz.

This is Greg Young, just alone on the show this week, and exploring the story of a very

unusual New York landmark, located on Roosevelt Island, that narrow two-mile island situated

in the East River between Manhattan and Queens.

Now we recorded an entire show on the history of Roosevelt Island back from 2009, but

the place has changed so greatly since then, unrecognizable really from how we described

it on that original show, especially the southern end of the island.

...