“Barren Island is a long way from anywhere,” reported the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1906. Indeed, in the 1850s, this swampy speck in Jamaica Bay was chosen for just that reason to be the site of garbage and dead animal processing for New York City.
And there a community grew, of the workers and their families, almost all new immigrants and African Americans from southern states. Ignored by the city, this little village came to thrive through its own efforts, as residents grew their own food, demanded a school, fought their own fires, and built their own houses and streets. The city depended on the waste processing skills of Barren Islanders, even as the city’s first municipal airport, Floyd Bennett Field, grew up around them. In the 1920s and 30s the island was attached to the rest of Brooklyn, and in 1936, the whole community was evicted to make room for the Marine Parkway Bridge.
My book, Brooklyn’s Barren Island: A Forgotten History (History Press, 2019), tells the story of this community. From the work of horse skinners and fish processors, to the days kids spent roaming the swamps, to the bar brawls and the Polish Catholic masses, the islanders who built their lives on this sandy, windswept bit of land deserve to have their stories told. Click on the photos below to learn more, and click on a link below to purchase the book.
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On August 14, 1897, Scientific American published a cover article about garbage reduction on Barren Island.
This process turned household waste into grease that was sold to industries all over the world. It also prevented the waste from being dumped in the Atlantic Ocean, which was the only other alternative that municipal authorities considered at the time. The garbage factory, like all of the other factories that existed on the island, was privately owned and operated under contract with the city.
Miriam Sicherman collection.
1899 map of Barren Island. Compare this one to the 1920 map from the same atlas to see some of the changes in the island’s geography. From one year to the next, both natural and artificial changes altered the shape of Barren Island.
From Atlas of the Brooklyn Borough of the City of New York, v. 3, E. B. Hyde & Co., The New York Public Library, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/6e4b3210-0ab4-0132-ff3a-58d385a7b928.
1920 map of Barren Island, showing numerous changes in the shape of the island and the course of Deep Creek, as compared to the 1899 map.
From Atlas of the Borough of Brooklyn, City of New York, v. 3, E.B. Hyde & Co., The New York Public Library, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/6c152750-a19e-6b6e-e040-e00a180611af.
This map of the island was made after Flatbush Avenue was extended from Avenue U all the way to the other side of the island in 1926. The Flatbush Avenue extension changed life on Barren Island immensely. The isolated nature of life on the island ended. For one thing, kids could go to high school for the first time, since the local school went only through eighth grade.
E. Belcher Hyde, 1929, Miriam Sicherman collection.
This 1873 map of the Town of Flatlands, showing Barren Island among other marshy islands, makes it vividly clear why ferry service had to originate in Canarsie and not in Flatlands itself. This whole area of Jamaica Bay was very difficult for mariners to navigate. One dangerous effect of this was lengthy delays in fireboat service in emergencies.
From the Atlas of Long Island, New York, Beers, Comstock & Cline, The New York Public Library, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e2-6349-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.
Barren Island garbage factory, including a horse pulling a cart on an elevated walkway. The smokestack was often cited as the source of offensive odors. Circa 1900.
NPS/Gateway NRA Museum Collection, catalog number 18859.
Plank roads and paths, built by islanders, lead to the shore and the Coffee Pot, across from Floyd Bennett Field, July 5, 1932. Tiny businesses dotted the island starting in the late eighteenth century.
Photograph by Percy Loomis Sperr. Lee A. Rosenzweig collection.
A group of children in aprons with large pockets scavenging through a mountain of trash looking for valuables, ca. 1904. Visiting reporters were told that different families specialized in different materials, like rags, bones, or metal, that could be sold before the garbage was processed at the factory.
Lee A. Rosenzweig collection.
First Auto Trip on Record to Barren Island
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, page 39 (January 27, 1918); Brooklyn Public Library, Center for Brooklyn History
Demolition of the Barren Island garbage factory smokestack, with the factory building itself still present, March 20, 1937. The smokestack was described as a “menace to aviation” by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, as it interfered with pilots taking off and landing at Floyd Bennett Field. The smokestack had not been in use since the factory closed in 1919.
Lee A. Rosenzweig collection.
Smoke rising from the chimney of the Barren Island incinerator, ca. 1904. This image evokes Barren Island’s remote location. It was sometimes unreachable for weeks at a time during particularly bad weather or when Jamaica Bay was iced over. Yet the odors from the smokestack, garbage, dead fish, and other dead animals freely wafted over to Coney Island, the Rockaways, and other nearby locations, causing countless complaints to health authorities.
Lee A. Rosenzweig collection.
Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church. Sacred Heart was designated by the Brooklyn Diocese as a Polish church. It had resident pastors from 1908 to 1914, and before and after that it was served by priests from elsewhere in the diocese. The church outlived the village and served members of the U.S. Naval Air Command until 1942.
Photo by Percy Loomis Sperr. Brian Merlis collection.
Crowds at the dedication of Floyd Bennett Field in 1930. Floyd Bennett was New York City’s first municipal airport, and hopes were high that it would be a great success. Many of the most famous aviators of the time, from Amelia Earhart to Wiley Post, used the airport. However, LaGuardia (then the New York Municipal Airport) opened in 1939 and was much more successful, due to its proximity to Manhattan. During World War II, the U.S. Navy took over Floyd Bennett Field, and after the war, the airport shut down.
Brian Merlis collection.
P.S. 120 was originally housed in this small building on the edge of the island. The school’s principal, Spencer Wallace, suffered a mental breakdown in 1899, apparently because of stress over the building’s extreme deterioration. The New York City Board of Education finally opened a real schoolhouse, with six classrooms, in 1901.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, page 4 (September 17, 1897); Brooklyn Public Library, Center for Brooklyn History
Barren Islanders at Prospect Park: On April 22, 1921, two hundred Barren Island children went on a field trip to Prospect Park in Brooklyn. They enjoyed ice cream, carousel riding, and feeding milk to baby lambs. Among the onlookers are Parks Commissioner John N. Harman, in suit and tie, and Barren Island School principal Jane Shaw, in fur collar. Harman had invited the group after a visit to Barren Island in which he noted its lack of greenery.
Miriam Sicherman collection.
The old “glue factory” at Barren Island, where dead animals were processed, shown in the summer of 1937, several years after it closed. The animal carcasses were converted into a wide array of products with uses from gold and sugar refining, to glove and umbrella handle manufacturing. Factories were often located right on the water, and when the island’s land shifted, they occasionally fell into Jamaica Bay.
Lee A. Rosenzweig collection.
Public School 120, which opened in the spring of 1901. This building replaced a dilapidated, leaky one-classroom structure that served as the school building for about twenty years. The new building accommodated more pupils in a safe environment. Upon the arrival of energetic and beloved principal Jane F. Shaw in 1918, it became a center of the island community and had the best attendance record in the borough. Ca. 1904.
Lee A. Rosenzweig collection.
A typical retail store on Barren Island, located in a house, ca. 1931. Resident William Maier, who was born on the island in 1917 and lived there until 1935, had fond memories of visiting a store like this, where he would buy an ice cream cone and a pickle, to the amusement of the proprietor, Mrs. Smith.
Brian Merlis collection.
It’s Goodbye
In 1936, almost all the islanders were evicted by the order of Robert Moses because the Marine Parkway Bridge was about to be built. Their houses stood on city-owned land and they had no recourse. But there was a bit of land on the island that was privately owned, and about 30 families moved there, including the Salvatys. This clipping is from 1942, when the U.S. Navy evicted the remaining residents because the existing Naval Air Station had expanded its operations during the war. Aircraft were tested and the first helicopter training facility in the world was established there.
Clipping from unknown newspaper, courtesy of Barren Island descendant Collette Liantonio.