America’s First Dedicated Smallpox Hospital Now Crumbles as Eerily Beautiful NYC Landmark

Roosevelt Island Smallpox Hospital Ruins, New York

Most folks know Roosevelt Island for its tram rides and river views. But on its south end stands a gothic castle that once housed New York’s sickest residents.

This haunting structure started as a smallpox hospital in 1856. Now it glows at night as a ruin unlike any other in NYC.

Here’s the story.

A Child Prodigy Designed This Gothic Nightmare At Age 25

James Renwick Jr. wasn’t your average architect. This whiz kid entered Columbia at 12 and finished in three years.

With zero formal architecture training, he somehow created the haunting Smallpox Hospital that still gives Roosevelt Island visitors chills.

The gray stone structure he designed in 1856 wasn’t just functional – Renwick went full Gothic horror with pointed arches, crenelated towers, and a dramatic entrance that looks straight out of a Brontë novel.

Rich Or Poor, Smallpox Didn’t Discriminate (But The Hospital Did)

Before this hospital existed, smallpox patients were stuffed into what one doctor brutally described as wooden shacks along the river.

The new facility was revolutionary as America’s first dedicated smallpox hospital, but don’t think it was all equality and progress.

The wealthy got private rooms upstairs while the poor were packed into crowded wards below.

Convicts Built Their Own Gothic Prison-Hospital

The construction crew for this hospital? Literal prisoners.

When New York bought this island in 1828, they immediately filled it with prisons and hospitals, then forced the inmates to build more of them.

Inmates from Blackwell Island’s penitentiary quarried the stone, cut it, and built the walls with their own hands.

The gray gneiss they wrestled from the island’s bedrock has outlasted everyone involved in the project.

They even put patients from the island’s mental asylum to work on construction.

New York’s Island Of Misfit Humans

Roosevelt Island wasn’t always trendy apartments with Manhattan views.

Back when it was Blackwell’s Island, it functioned as New York’s human dumping ground.

The island packed in a notorious insane asylum, a penitentiary, multiple hospitals, and a quarry – basically every undesirable institution that proper society wanted out of sight.

By the late 1800s, around 7,000 outcasts lived on this narrow strip of land, physically separated from ‘respectable’ Manhattan by a short but socially unbridgeable stretch of East River.

7,000 Patients A Year Passed Through Just 100 Beds

With only 100 beds, this hospital somehow processed a staggering 7,000 patients annually.

You either recovered or died, usually very quickly. During the 1901 epidemic, the police conducted ‘smallpox raids,’ literally dragging symptomatic people from their homes and separating families.

Even in 1871, fifteen years after the hospital opened and decades after vaccine development, smallpox still ravaged New York, hitting Civil War veterans and fresh immigrants hardest.

The constant stream of patients never slowed as ships kept bringing new, unvaccinated people to the city’s shores.

Disaster Hospital Becomes Trendy Nursing School

After decades of disease and death, this building got a surprising second act.

Renamed Riverside Hospital in 1875 (for its East River location), it eventually transformed into America’s third nursing school in 1886.

The Sisters of Charity from St. Vincent’s Hospital took over, creating the Home for the Nurses of the Maternity and City Hospital Training School.

For nearly 70 years – far longer than it served as a smallpox hospital – the building educated generations of nurses who lived right on the fourth floor.

The Gothic hospital that once isolated society’s sickest members became a community for healthcare professionals shaping modern medicine.

Later Architects Respected The Original Gothic Design

When the nursing school needed expansion in the early 1900s, the architects showed remarkable restraint. Instead of imposing their own style (as architects love to do), they honored Renwick’s original Gothic vision.

Between 1903-1905, two wings were added that so perfectly matched the original that they seem part of the initial design.

The architectural firms – York & Sawyer and Renwick’s own successor firm – only broke from pure Gothic style with a practical mansard roof for extra space.

The cohesive design makes the ruin even more striking today, as the entire complex deteriorated as one unified Gothic skeleton rather than a mismatched collection of additions.

The Island Rebranded Itself Twice As Its Reputation Evolved

The island’s name changes tell its story better than any history book.

It began as Blackwell’s Island, transformed into Welfare Island in 1921 (brutally honest branding), and finally became Roosevelt Island in 1973, honoring FDR.

New York bought the island specifically to isolate ‘undesirables’ from Manhattan’s population, but by 1969, they were leasing it to developers to create a residential community.

Spooky Green Lights Make The Ruins An After-Dark Instagram Favorite

Drive along FDR Drive at night and you’ll spot an eerie green glow across the water. Since 1995, dramatic lighting has transformed these ruins into a nocturnal landmark.

What started as a fundraising gimmick to generate preservation support has become one of Roosevelt Island’s most distinctive features.

The lighting accentuates every Gothic detail – the pointed arches, the crenellated walls, the ivy-covered stone – creating a haunting silhouette against the night sky.

NYC’s Preservation Rules Were Literally Changed For This Building

New York City had to invent a new preservation category for the Smallpox Hospital: ‘landmarked ruin.’

When it received official landmark status in 1972 (National Register of Historic Places) and 1976 (NYC landmark), preservationists faced a unique challenge.

Unlike other protected buildings meant to be restored to original condition, this structure was officially protected in its deteriorated state.

Architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock championed its significance despite (or because of) its decay.

When the north wing partially collapsed in 2007, the city scrambled to fund a $4.5 million stabilization project to preserve its carefully curated state of romantic deterioration.