Rare Look Inside Eerie Crumbling Remains Of Roosevelt Island's Renwick Ruins Smallpox Hospital With Travel Channel's Off Limits

Image of Renwick Ruin Smallpox Hospital From Olya's Urban Journal

Reported last April on Travel Channel's Off Limits program visiting Roosevelt Island's Renwick Ruins Smallpox Hospital with Roosevelt Island Historical Society (RIHS) President Judy Berdy. Here the segment that appeared last spring.


According to the RIHS:

... The original Smallpox Hospital – without the north and south wings which are later additions — was built in 1854-56 and designed by James Renwick, Jr. It was first opened for public inspection on December 18, 1856. When the old buildings were destroyed by fire, patients had to be transferred to the new hospital which was not yet completely ready. Nevertheless, the Resident Physician, William Sanger, reported that the new building was “admirable,” and opinion also voiced by the professional staff during the following years. The Smallpox Hospital accommodated one hundred patients with charity cases in wards on the lower floors and a series of private rooms a the upper stories for paying patients. In 1875 the Board of Health assumed control of the Smallpox Hospital which had previously been administered by the Commission of Charities and Correction and was converted to a Home for the Nurses and the Maternity and Charity Hospital Training School. This school, established in 1875, was associated with Charity Hospital (later City Hospital), located just north of the Smallpox Hospital. As the training program expanded, a residence for the student nurses became necessary. The Smallpox Hospital became available for this purpose after a new hospital for the treatment of smallpox and other contagious diseases was built on North Brothers Island. this also had the effect of reducing the danger of the spread of the disease to the Blackwell’s Island population, which by the end of the century numbered some seven thousand....

You can't get the inside tour of the Renwick Ruins Smallpox Hospital that the folks from Off Limits received but you can get close up to it at Roosevelt Island's new Southpoint Park recently reopened last summer.

Image of Southpoint Park Rendering From RIOC Record (Page 12)

More on Renwick Ruins Smallpox Hospital and recently restored Southpoint Park.