II. WARD’S ISLAND.
Ward’s Island takes its name from Jasper and Bartholomew Ward, who formerly owned it. It comprises an area of about
two hundred acres, and is owned in about equal portions by the Commissioners of Emigration and the Department of Charities and Corrections. It is separated from New York by the Harlem River, from Blackwell’s and Long islands by that portion of the East River known as Hell Gate, and from Randall’s Island by a narrow strait called Little Hell Gate. It lies a little to the northeast of Blackwell’s Island, about half a mile from it, and is the widest of the three islands in the East River.
The Emigrant Hospital is described in another chapter.
The new Lunatic Asylum is located on the extreme eastern portion of the island.
Between the Emigrant Hospital and the Lunatic Asylum is the New York Inebriate Asylum, a handsome brick edifice, three stories in height, with a frontage of 474 feet, and a depth of 50 feet. It is provided with every convenience, is supplied with the Croton water, and has accommodations for 400 patients. The patients consist of those who either seek the Asylum voluntarily or are placed there by their friends, and who pay for their accommodations, and those who are sent to the institution by the police authorities for reformation. The treatment is moral as well as physical. The physician’s efforts to repair the ravages of dissipation in the physical system are supplemented by the labors of the chaplain and the other officers of the institution, who seek to revive in the patient a sound, healthy morality, which they strive to make the basis of his reformation.
III. RANDALL’S ISLAND.
Randall’s Island is so called from Jonathan Randall, a former owner. It lies about one hundred yards to the north of Ward’s Island, from which it is separated by Little Hell Gate. The Harlem Kills separate it from Westchester county, and the Harlem River from New York. About thirty acres of the southern portion are owned by the “Society for the Reformation
of Juvenile Delinquents.” The remainder is the property of the “Commissioners of Charities and Corrections.”
