Text size:

New York's South Brother Island to be a sanctuary

DAVID FREEDLANDER

When the Dutch paid $24 for the island of Manhattan, it was a pretty good deal for such a centrally located piece of real estate.

Now, 381 years later, the city is adding another island to its portfolio. But this one probably won't turn out to be so lucrative.

The city plans to announce today that it has received the deed for South Brother Island, the last privately owned island in New York City.

The island, an overgrown, uninhabited 7-acre piece of land battered by wind in the East River, was sold to the investment group Hampton Scows Inc. by the city in 1975 for $10. Now the federal government is purchasing it from the group for $2 million, a markup of 20 million percent, and turning it over to the city's Parks Department.

It has become a significant nesting colony for several types of shorebirds, including egrets, cormorants and night herons.

"It's one of the few places of untrammeled nature left in the whole city," said Susan Clark, director of public affairs for the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, which is facilitating the deed transfer.

"It's really just good luck it's been saved."

Unlike what usually happens when vacant land changes hands, its new owner won't be building anything on it.

The Parks Department intends to preserve it as a bird sanctuary and use it for educational purposes.

"People get it," said Bill Tai, the department's director of natural resources. "The burgeoning population of birds is a sign of health for the whole harbor."

The island was once owned by Jacob Ruppert, the owner of the Yankees from 1915 until the late 1930s.

He built a summer home there in the 1890s, a short boat ride away from his house on the Upper East Side.

Legend has it that Babe Ruth used to visit him there, and would swat balls into the East River. That myth seems unlikely to be grounded in fact, though, because Ruppert's house burned down in 1907, 13 years before he purchased Ruth's contract from the Boston Red Sox and seven years before the slugger even played in the majors.

In 1901, however, Ruppert did host the Borough of the Bronx baseball championship between two local clubs on the island.

After the fire, the land lay fallow until 1944, when it was purchased by John Gerosa, president of the Metropolitan Roofing Supply Company, who planned to build a summer retreat there for his workers.

The island passed through several owners before eventually ending up in the city's hands. Faced with a fiscal crisis in the mid-1970s and looking to unload its properties, the city sold it to Hampton Scows in 1975, according to Anthony Greene of the Bronx County Historical Society.

Representatives from the company did not return phone calls seeking comment.

In 2002, Rep. Jose Serrano (D-Bronx) secured the funding for the resale. "The species of birds migrate there from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico," he said, "not unlike the people in my district."

Although no serious plans were put forward through the decades to develop the island, bird and nature lovers are relieved South Brother Island is now off-limits.

"You know the way New York is," Serrano said. "Eventually, somebody would have bought it and decided to tear it all up. ... We can have one place in the great metropolis to see how it used to be."