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Rat Island (Bronx)

Islands of New York CityIslands of the BronxLong Island SoundPrivate islands of New York (state)Use mdy dates from August 2019
Rat Island
Rat Island

Rat Island is a privately owned island in New York City. It is approximately 2.5 acres (1.0 ha) in size and located in City Island Harbor, which is a part of Long Island Sound. It is about halfway between City Island and Hart Island and south of High Island. It is one of the Pelham Islands.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Rat Island (Bronx) (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Rat Island (Bronx)
Kirby Street, New York The Bronx

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Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 40.855 ° E -73.780833333333 °
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Address

Wilhelm Tell

Kirby Street 1291
10464 New York, The Bronx
New York, United States
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Rat Island
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Hart Island (Bronx)
Hart Island (Bronx)

Hart Island, sometimes referred to as Hart's Island, is located at the western end of Long Island Sound, in the northeastern Bronx in New York City. Measuring approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) long by 0.33 miles (0.53 km) wide, Hart Island is part of the Pelham Islands archipelago, to the east of City Island. The island's first public use was as a training ground for the United States Colored Troops in 1864. Since then, Hart Island has been the location of a Union Civil War prison camp, a psychiatric institution, a tuberculosis sanatorium, a potter's field with mass burials, a homeless shelter, a boys' reformatory, a jail, and a drug rehabilitation center. Several other structures, such as an amusement park, were planned for Hart Island but not built. During the Cold War, Nike defense missiles were stationed on Hart Island. The island was intermittently used as a prison and a homeless shelter until 1967; the last inhabited structures were abandoned in 1977. The potter's field on Hart Island was run by the New York City Department of Correction until 2019, when the New York City Council voted to transfer jurisdiction to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. The remains of more than one million people are buried on Hart Island, though since the first decade of the 21st century, there are fewer than 1,500 burials a year. Burials on Hart Island include individuals who were not claimed by their families or did not have private funerals; the homeless and the indigent; and mass burials of disease victims. Access to the island was restricted by the Department of Correction, which operated an infrequent ferryboat service and imposed strict visitation quotas. Burials were conducted by inmates from the nearby Rikers Island jail. The Hart Island Project, a public charity founded by visual artist Melinda Hunt, worked to improve access to the island and make burial records more easily available. Transfer to the Parks Department in 2019 had been sought for over twenty years and was hoped to ease public access to the Island. Burials in the island's Potters' Field continued after the transfer.