NYC Interest Related

Discover the macabre tombs and catacombs hidden within Brooklyn's famous Green-Wood Cemetery.

Bernard Ente of the Newtown Creek Alliance takes us up the creek, tells us the history of the area, why it's so polluted and why we should care. And he makes it fun too.

Chris Baker pilots tugboats for Staten Island-based McAllister Towing, one of New York City's two towing outfits. Back in May, our crew joined Captain Baker as vessels from the United States and Canadian Navies called to port for Fleet Week 2009. Captain Baker's tug, the Rosemary McAllister, helped dock the U.S.S. Iwo Jima, an 844-ft Wasp-class amphibious assault ship, and the U.S.S. Roosevelt, a 500-ft Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.

North Brother Island lies in the East River, between The Bronx and Queens, just west of Rikers Island and directly under the flight path of departing jets from LaGuardia. It was once the site of Riverside Hospital, a tuberculosis facility later converted to GI housing after WWII. Previously, it was home to the infamous “Typhoid” Mary Mallon during her years of quarantine. Throughout the 1950s, the city operated a drug rehab center for adolescents there, but the hospital closed in 1963, and North Brother was abandoned. Nature slowly reclaimed the island.

Today North Brother Island is a protected heron habitat, owned by the Department of Parks and Recreation. Access to the island is extremely limited due to the sensitivity of the bird-breeding habitat.

In the past, a number of colonial water bird species nested on North Brother Island, including Black-crowned Night Herons, Glossy Ibus, and Great Egrets. Over the last several years, however, the bird population on North Brother Island has declined.

To keep track of colonial water bird populations in the city, the New York City Audubon Society conducts a yearly survey of seventeen islands within New York Harbor, including North Brother Island. This May, The City Concealed joined Dr. Susan Elbin and research associate Liz Craig on their survey to find out whether the herons are back on North Brother Island or nesting elsewhere.