Hoffman Island

By the 1870s, Hoffman and Swinburne Islands, off the eastern shore of Staten Island, became new quarantine stations for the port of New York. These small islands were enlarged with landfill and served as designated quarantine stations for arriving immigrants who were either suspected of being infected or found to have infectious disease when arriving at the port of New York. Even after Ellis Island opened in 1892, people quarantined on Hoffman or Swinburne were not permitted to leave for further inspection unless they showed signs that they were not in fact sick, or had recovered.     In the mid-1890s, at the request of Dr. Doty of the U.S. Public Health Service, Alice Austen, a photographer who lived on Staten Island, began to take pictures on Hoffman and Swinburne islands, to record the quarantine procedures and equipment.   Although she was paid for her initial images of the islands, Austen found the ships, quarantine procedures, fumigating equipment, and laboratories fascinating, and continued to photograph Hoffman and Swinburne for over a decade out of personal interest. She finally stopped photographing them in 1910.    By the late 1930s, Hoffman and Swinburne Islands stopped being used as quarantine stations. They are now managed by the National Park Service and are a sanctuary for birds and harbor seals.