Hoffman Island, date unknown.

Currently part of the Staten Island Unit of the Gateway National Recreation Area, eleven-acre Hoffman Island (and its four-acre neighbor, Swinburne Island) are both man-made land masses. Constructed from landfill in the 1870s, the islands and their facilities were created as quarantine stations for immigrants suffering from contagious diseases. Hoffman Island was a “Quarantine of Observation” for people who might have smallpox or typhus. Immigration to the U.S slowed in the years after the passage of the Immigration Act in 1923. Also advances in medical knowledge and technology changed the treatment of contagious diseases. The islands were largely abandoned until 1938 when they were re-purposed for a U.S. Maritime training school. Eventually fully abandoned in 1947 and left to the birds (literally), the islands are easily visible from the South Beach-Franklin Delano Roosevelt Boardwalk on Staten Island.