Last Island in New York Saved

The last private island in New York City, an untamed speck of land with spectacular views of the Manhattan skyline, was preserved on Tuesday for its current residents — snowy egrets and black-crowned night herons. South Brother Island — a 7-acre (2.8-hectare) vacant island in the East River between The Bronx and Queens — was handed over to the city on Tuesday to be protected as a bird nesting ground, officials said.

They said the $2 million deal was unusual due to the combination of the island’s central location yet relatively untouched landscape.

“It has stunning views; it is very idyllic,” said John Calvelli, senior vice president for the Wildlife Conservation Society. The island’s overgrown trees, vines and various bird species make it “one of the last wild places left in New York,” he said.

Officials said the wind-swept island would have been unlikely to attract high bids from real estate developers because it is only accessible by boat, but it might have been turned into an industrial facility or prison, like neighboring Rikers Island.

Instead, the island, which has been held in private hands since the Dutch settled almost four centuries ago, will be kept as a nesting area for migratory birds and preserved by New York City’s Parks Department.

“How often do you buy an island and give it to the city in the same day?” said Rep. Jose Serrano, who helped broker the deal between its former owner, Hampton Scows Inc., and the Trust for Public Land, which bought the island with money from the federal government and turned it over to the city.
South Brother Island is one of a pair of small islands in the East River situated between the Bronx and Riker’s Island, New York City. The other island, larger and better known, is North Brother Island. It is uninhabited.

As late as the 1960s, South Brother Island was considered part of Queens County, but is now part of Bronx County. It has long been privately owned. Jacob Ruppert, a brewery magnate and early owner of the New York Yankees (responsible for bringing Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees from the Boston Red Sox), had a summer house on the island early in the twentieth century. No one has lived on the island since then. There are no structures extant.

Ruppert owned the Island until the late 1930s. In 1944 it was purchased by John Gerosa, president of the Metropolitan Roofing Supply Company, who intended to build a summer retreat for his workers on the island. This did not come to pass, and the island passed through several owners before coming into the possession of the City of New York.

In 1975, under circumstances that are seemingly now unclear, the City sold South Brother island to Hampton Scows Inc., a Long Island investment company, for $10.There has been little or no reporting on why this deal was made.

Hampton Scows dutifully paid property taxes every year but brought forth no plans to develop the seven-acre island. On November 20, 2007, it was reported that the City of New York would be purchasing the island and preserving it as a wildlife sanctuary. The price is reported to have been in the neighborhood of $2,000,000 and was brought about by a consolidated effort of conservation and redevelopment organizations working with the federal government, namely The Point (named for Hunts Point section of The Bronx), The Trust for Public Land, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and the U.S. federal government.

The island’s dense brush supports a major nesting colony of several species of birds, notably Black-crowned Night Heron, Great Egret, Snowy Egret, and Double-crested Cormorant.

Together, the two Brother Islands, North and South, have a land area of 81,423 square meters, or 20.12 acres.