Winter tends to drive me indoors for several months at a time, longing for the feeling of sunshine on my limbs and lungfuls of fresh air. This semi-hibernation begins to make me feel like my world has contracted around me, limited to my office and my apartment, with the occasional bar thrown in for good measure. Always toward the end of January I start to feel edgy and pent up, and all I want to do is to get outside and back into that big jungle of a city in which I seem to have taken up permanent residence.
So today without my usual weekend partner in crime, I decided to go island hopping. Roosevelt Island has always intrigued me a bit, being smack in the middle of the East River, packed full of high rises, and sporting a decaying hospital at the south end. I envisioned several very narrow, twisty streets and secret jems of bookshops or bars or who knows what tucked away from the general public. The method of getting there provided yet another draw for me--I'd always wanted to ride the gondola-like tram, it being such a brightly-colored novelty in comparison to my typical subterranean shuttle.
After taking several more trains than is normally necessary due to weekend subway "improvements," I emerged blinking into the sunshine in front of Bloomingdale's on the Upper East Side. I fought the throngs of shoppers for a few blocks until I found the tram staircase and hopped onboard. It was pleasantly cozy with heating, and I scooted over near the window to take in the southern view.
The ride was delightful, offering stunning avenue and rooftop views, and in fact I could have done it all day, riding back and forth, up and down over half of the width of the East River. However, I was itching with anticipation to see what treasures Roosevelt Island had in store for me.
As it turns out, there weren't many. The place was, for a better word, strange. Immediately I found the well-maintained sidewalk that runs around the periphery of the island and began following it south, toward Renwick Ruin, which was once a smallpox hospital. The west side of the island offers stunning views of Manhattan, and breathing in the brackish air, I thought I would very much like to one day go for a run on this path. In fact, a jogger had already passed me, to my envy.
I walked briskly down past a sprawling, operational nursing home/hospital campus to arrive at a large chain-link fence topped with razor wire, marking the northernmost edge of the Renwick Ruin area. Unfortunately, the area appears to be closed to the public, and one can only catch tantalizing glimpses of the decaying buildings of the old smallpox wards. Sighing, I walked the length of the boundary fence, noticing one spot by the ground that seemed to have been wrenched upward by human hands, and which appeared large enough for me to slither through on my belly. While I consider myself a relatively adventurous individual, I decided that I was not brave enough to get arrested and jailed by myself. I made a mental note to come back with someone I could outrun, and kept walking.
Rounding the south end of the path, I then started moving northward, up the eastern side of Roosevelt Island. The view of Queens was not quite as rousing as that of Manhattan, so I stepped up the pace to get to the "heart" of Roosevelt. On the way I passed a "Hazardous Materials" area (which, it should be noted, had no barrier between it and the river, making me wonder what exactly the winds have blown into the water from time to time), and got growled at by an apparent bum, but other than that passed no one. Other than the constant white noise of wind and traffic from the FDR across the way, the place was almost unsettlingly quiet.
Th path curved in a bit and I thought I spied a good place to dive into town. I veered into the middle of the island and found myself on Main Street.
Apparently my vision of a mini maze of streets was a bit misguided. Roosevelt Island seems to have exactly one major road running down the center of most of its length. Other than that, there are the perimeter roads, but no side streets. The island simply isn't wide enough. In fact, you can see both edges of the island from any place you stand unless your view is impeded by a building. Still, I was looking forward to finding the main "hub," where many of the residents were surely out and about on such a brisk, sunny day.
Main Street is paved with the same interlocking brown bricks as the sidewalks. All the surrounding buildings are generally either brown or red-brown brick, lending the place a bizarre monochromacity. At first glance, the brick paving and the narrowness and curving angle of Main Street, combine with a glimpse of an obviously old church made me compare it to a very generic-looking, Americanized version of a European village, but soon I realized even that was being overly romantic.
The street was lined with the shops that met all an urbanite's basic needs--a mini mart, a hardware store, a nails salon, a thrift shop, one ubiquitous Chinese restaurant, and further down a new Gristedes supermarket and a tiny outdoor farmer's market. However, much to my discontent, I realized that Main Street was almost dead silent. The very few people on the sidewalks were not speaking, just walking along, heads down. I began to doubt my own sanity--was I the only one crazy enough to be taking a walk on this windy day? Surely with all the residences surrounding me, there had to be more people. But where were they?
I didn't dally too long on Main Street, and instead pressed on, determined to walk the two-mile length of the island and back. I noticed that the tall buildings around me were either glass-coated luxury high rises, or those that looked like housing projects, with nothing in between; very strange real estate planning and development indeed.
Further north I passed a large, imposing-looking gray building with a capitol-like dome on top. Approaching the sign, I could see it was called "the Octagon." This pleased me probably more than it should have, and I began to envision it as Roosevelt Island's answer to the Pentagon, wherein strategists were devising elaborate plans of defense on the chance that some force tried to seize the island for its strategic position between Manhattan and Queens. I was disappointed to see that upon closer inspection, it too was a high-end residence. Later I learned that it had once been an insane asylum, which made it slightly more interesting again.
I passed yet another hospital on the north end (if you have to get injured, try to do so on Roosevelt Island, where medical help is apparently just footsteps away) and soldiered on behind another lone jogger to the lighthouse at the northern point. I stood there for a moment, cold wind whipping tears out of my eyes imagining myself on the bow of a large ship, heading on an Arctic expedition, and then turned my back to the wind, walking again down the west side of the island back toward the tram station.
Shortly thereafter I ran into an actual replica of a bow of a boat jutting out from the sidewalk over the rocks. I walked up to the tip to observe the sturdy red tugs steadfastly pushing barges twice their size up and down the river, then noting that my imaginary boat was about to crash into Manhattan, turned my attention to another old church behind me, which looked lived in. Among the rusting bikes and grills in the yard were other more peculiar pieces, such as an old car seat sitting atop a picnic table in the yard. I guess you never know when you might need a spare car seat.
The only other things of note on the walk back to the tram were some small statues reminiscent of the ones at the subway station at 14th Street/8th Avenue (presumably by the same artist) sitting in pedestals planted in the rocks by the riverside. The title of the installation was "the Marriage of Money and Real Estate," featuring a small house in a skirt either holding hands with a coin in a hat or being dragged down into the river by a lobster with a money bag for a head.
Passing a rather expansive and cozy-looking Starbucks just before the tram, I believe I found most of the residents of the island, packed inside sipping grande lattes or cocoas and typing away at laptops; it was the largest concentration of people I'd seen there all day. But again, no one seemed to be talking.
At this point I had walked Roosevelt Island pretty much in its entirety, and not finding one place to draw me in and make me stay awhile, I decided it was time to move on. I regained admission to the tram with a swipe of my MetroCard and several minutes later was again sailing through the air and over half the river, peeking in nearby windows and deserted rooftop gardens, back to the loud, densely populated New York with which I am by now intimately familiar.
I know that in the past when I expressed interest in Roosevelt Island, my friends gave a small snort and said "Why? There's nothing there." Unfortunately I can offer no gripping experienced to refute this claim, and in reality I think Roosevelt Island's history may be much more fascinating than a visit. For example, according to the RI Historical Society, the lighthouse I mentioned, which overlooks the forebodingly named Hellsgate section of the East River, was built in 1874, and its construction was preceded by "long 'negotiations' with John McCarthy, an asylum inmate who'd built his own clay fort there to defend us against British invasion. Until the 1960s McCarthy's crudely carved plaque remained (stating):
This is the work
Was done by
John McCarthy
Who built the light
House from the bottom to the top
Let all ye who pass by
Pray for his soul when he dies."
I suppose my initial assessment of the Octagon may not have been as far off-base as I thought.
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