Home to the crumbling ruins of a quarantine hospital that once housed Typhoid Mary, juvenile heroin addicts, and many of New York City's other castoffs, North Brother Island has long drawn the attention of urban explorers. The fact that it's closed to the public and relatively isolated, on the East River between the Bronx and Rikers Island, probably makes it all the more enticing. Curbed NY recently featured the work of photographer Christopher Payne, who visited the island multiple times over a period of several years with the approval of the New York City Parks Department and compiled the photos he took there into a 144-page book. In it, an essay by Robert Sullivan declares that "just as the unimaginable greenness leaves you euphoric—ecstatic over the abilities of weeds, plants, and trees—so the abandonment is terrifying. When you look back where you just were, there are moments of real fright. No escaping them." See for yourself below:
· Exploring the East River's Lush, Lonely North Brother Island [Curbed NY]
· All North Brother Island coverage [Curbed NY]
· All Abandonment Issues posts [Curbed National]