Spotlight on: City Island
By BARBARA DOLENSEK
In 1654 an English physician named Thomas Pell purIn 1873, David Carll, a shipbuilder who had moved chased about 50,000 acres from the Lenape Indians in orhis business from Long Island to City Island, conder to eliminate Dutch ownership of the land. Included in structed the first bridge to the mainland, constructthe purchase was an island called ed from the timbers Minneford or Minnewits, but was he removed from the renamed City Island in the 18th cendecommissioned tury by a developer who wanted to battleship USS North make it a rival to New York Harbor. Carolina. The wooden The Revolutionary War ended that bridge was replaced effort on the island, which was then by a steel bridge in settled by various owners, including 1901, shortly after George Washington Horton, whose City Island became house is inside the current building part of New York City, that houses the Lobster Box restauwhich also built a new Boat building and sail making were the major businesses on rant. In 1835, a man from Connectischool, P.S. 17, now City Island from the 1860s until about 1980. The island still cut named Orrin Fordham came to the location of the City supports several marinas and yacht and boating clubs. City Island, where he developed a Island Nautical Musemethod of planting oysters, which became the major inum and a community center. City Island’s populadustry on the island. Many island families became very tion in 1868 was 800, but after the construction of prosperous gathering and selling oysters, but the business the wooden bridge it grew to 1,206, and by 1901, ended in the 1890s, thanks to pollution and overfishing. By there were 2,000 people living on the island. that time, the island had turned to boat building, sail makThe southern tip, originally part of the Horton ing, and piloting ships through Hell’s Gate on their way to property, was sold in the 1880s to William Belden, New York Harbor. a crooked financier who left Wall Street to create a
The City Island Nautical Museum is located in a landmark building at 190 Fordham Street that once housed P.S. 17 (left), built by the city of New York in 1898 after the island became part of the city.
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