Barren Island Brooklyn

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In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes,” as Benjamin Franklin famously said. This phrase has recently been amended by popular opinion to include student loans. Since most jobs these days require a bachelor’s degree, the amount of debt that Americans owe on their student loans

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Barren Island, once a standalone island, is now a peninsula located on the southeast shore of Brooklyn in New York City, situated in Jamaica Bay and originally part of the Outer Barrier island group on the South Shore of Long Island. Before Dutch settlers arrived in the 17th century, it was inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans. Its name, “Barren Island,” is derived from the Dutch term “Beeren Eylandt,” meaning “Bears’ Island.”

Primarily due to its isolation, Barren Island remained sparsely populated until the 19th century. However, starting in the 1850s, it saw significant development as an industrial complex, featuring fish rendering plants and other industries, alongside a diverse community of up to 1,500 residents. From the mid-19th century until 1934, Barren Island housed industrial plants that processed deceased horses from the city, converting them into various industrial products. This activity gave rise to the nickname “Dead Horse Bay” for the waterbody on the island’s western shore. Additionally, a garbage incinerator operated on the island from the 1890s to 1921, though it faced complaints due to its odor.

As industrial activity waned by the 1920s, landfill was utilized to connect Barren Island with the rest of Brooklyn. Most residents were evicted in the late 1920s to make way for the construction of Floyd Bennett Field, with some permitted to stay until 1942, when the airfield expanded as a wartime base for the U.S. Navy. Today, no remnants of Barren Island’s industrial past remain, as Floyd Bennett Field became part of the Gateway National Recreation Area in 1972, managed by the National Park Service.

Barren Island originated as part of an estuary at Jamaica Bay’s mouth, serving as a barrier island for the larger Long Island to its north. The bay itself formed during the Wisconsin glaciation’s final stages. Initially, the glacier’s edge ran through the middle of Long Island, resulting in a series of hills. The melting glacier’s waters flowed downhill toward a low-lying delta, eventually becoming Jamaica Bay. Rockaway Inlet, located south of Barren Island, connected the bay with the ocean.

By the late 17th century, Barren Island comprised 70 acres of salt meadows, 30 acres of uplands, and cedar forests, with salt, reed grasses, and hay serving as food for early settlers’ livestock. However, in the 19th century, Barren Island’s geography underwent significant changes due to shifting tides and storms. Originally part of the Outer Barrier, alongside islands like the Rockaways, Pelican Beach, and Plumb Beach, Barren Island merged with Plumb Beach and Pelican Beach by 1839, becoming a single island separated from Coney Island by Plumb Beach Inlet. Gerritsen Inlet later formed, further isolating Barren Island.

The neighboring Rockaway Beach also influenced Barren Island’s geography. Originally located to Barren’s east, Rockaway Beach extended over a mile southwest in the mid-19th century due to the construction of jetties. This extension altered Barren Island’s ecology, as it had featured sand dunes along the coast and salt marshes inland. Consequently, Barren Island lost its status as a barrier island, with its beach eroded away due to Rockaway Beach’s expansion.

The Barren Island area was originally inhabited by the Canarsee, a group of Lenape Native Americans, who referred to the nearby archipelago of islands as “Equandito,” “Equendito,” or “Equindito,” meaning “Broken Lands.” This term also applied to smaller islands in the vicinity, such as Mill Island. Throughout its history, Barren Island has been known in English as “Broken Lands,” as well as “Bearn Island,” “Barn Island,” and “Bear’s Island.” The name “Barren Island” itself is a corruption of the Dutch Beeren Eylandt and does not directly relate to the island’s geographical features in English.

A State University of New York study suggested that the indigenous Canarsee likely used Barren Island for fishing purposes. In 1636, as New Netherland expanded outward from present-day Manhattan, Dutch settlers founded the town of Achtervelt (later Amersfoort) and acquired 15,000 acres of land around Jamaica Bay north of Barren Island. Amersfoort was situated around the current intersection of Flatbush Avenue and Flatlands Avenue, approximately 2 miles northwest of Barren Island. Following the English takeover of New Netherland in 1664, Amersfoort was renamed Flatlands. Barren Island, along with nearby Mill Basin, was sold to John Tilton Jr. and Samuel Spicer that same year.

By 1684, Canarsee leaders had signed 22 land agreements with Dutch settlers, transferring ownership of much of their historic land, including Barren Island, to the Dutch. Barren Island became one of the first barrier islands to be settled due to its accessibility. At low tide, people from mainland Brooklyn could cross a shallow stream, while at high tide, small craft could access the northern coast and larger vessels could dock on the southern coast.

Barren Island, along with nearby Mill Island and Bergen Island, became part of the Town of Flatlands. By the 1670s, all three islands were leased by settler Elbert Elbertse. In 1679, Elbertse complained that other settlers were allowing their horses to graze on his land on Barren Island. In the 1740s, settler William Moore began extracting sand from the island, describing it as “vacant and unoccupied” in 1762. Despite being used mainly as a grazing field until the end of the 18th century, Barren Island had few residents even in the first half of the 19th century.

Around 1800, Nicholas Dooley established an inn and entertainment venue for fishermen and hunters on the east side of Barren Island, later inherited by the Johnson family. By 1860, two more residences were built for the Skidmore and Cherry families, with maps from that time showing no other human-made structures on the island.

The National Park Service suggests that the pirate Charles Gibbs buried Mexican silver on the island around 1830. According to an 1839 account, some of the treasure was later recovered, with a portion retrieved in 1842, as mentioned in a handbook from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, while the rest remained undiscovered.

The naturally deep Rockaway Inlet, coupled with Barren Island’s remoteness from the developed city, made it an ideal location for industrial activities. In the late 19th century, an isolated settlement emerged on the island, attracting various industries. From 1859 to 1934, around 26 industries established facilities on Barren Island, primarily concentrated on the eastern and southern coasts. However, due to its isolation, few industrial sectors were attracted to the island, as there were no direct land routes connecting it to the rest of the city.

Waste management emerged as the primary industry on Barren Island, given its suitability for such operations. The island’s first major industrial use was for fish rendering plants and fertilizer plants processing offal products. Fish rendering plants processed schools of menhaden, turning them into fish oil or scraps, while fertilizer plants utilized horse bones to produce glue, fertilizer, buttons, and materials for refining gold and sugar. These plants processed nearly 20,000 horse carcasses annually at their peak, leading to the moniker “Dead Horse Bay” for the water body on the island’s western shore, where waste processors dumped the processed waste.

By the late 1850s, two plants had been established on the island. One, on the eastern shore, was operated by Lefferts R. Cornell and processed animal carcasses. After a fire destroyed the facility in 1859, Cornell relocated his factory to Flatbush. The other corpse-processing plant, situated on the western shore and operated by William B. Reynolds, ceased operations during the 1860s. These fertilizer factories marked the first taxable buildings on Barren Island, as imposed by the town of Flatlands.

The late 1890s saw a significant decline in menhaden off Long Island, exacerbated by the Panic of 1893, leading to the closure of fish-oil plants. Despite this, carcass-dumping persisted, with records showing 1,256 horse carcasses processed in a five-day span in August 1896. In response, the city government awarded a $1 million contract to the New York Sanitary Utilization Company to operate on Barren Island, after failed attempts to bury waste on Rikers Island. The company, responsible for collecting garbage from hotels across the city, operated a garbage incinerator that transformed New York City’s waste into fertilizer, grease, and soap. Despite opposition from nearby Brooklyn communities, the incinerator was constructed.

By 1897, Barren Island was home to two garbage plants and four animal-processing plants. The same year, the town of Flatlands became part of the City of Greater New York, absorbed into the city’s 32nd Ward. Barren Island soon gained notoriety as a garbage dump, receiving waste and animal carcasses from Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx. While Queens and Staten Island had their own disposal sites, Barren Island handled refuse from the other boroughs.

The Sanitary Utilization Company disposed of non-processable items like glass bottles on the island’s northern coast. Valuable items such as jewelry also ended up on Barren Island. Island residents tolerated the smell of processed garbage, but the incinerator’s odors were so noxious that residents of the rest of Brooklyn, four miles away, could not endure them. Attempts to mitigate the stench through legislation failed due to opposition from the governor and mayor.

Incinerator damage occurred in 1904 and was followed by another major fire in 1906 that caused $1.5 million in damage and destroyed 16 buildings. Unstable coastal land caused numerous landslides from 1890 to 1907, damaging factories on the island. By the 1900s, the island received seven or eight garbage scows per day, delivering 50 to 100 short tons of trash collectively. Dead animals arrived daily, with workers at horse processing factories earning higher wages than those at the incinerator. The 1900 census recorded 520 residents in 103 households on Barren Island, with male laborer households dispersed. The island’s main landowners included the Sanitary Utilization Company, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, the Brooklyn government, and the Products Manufacturing Company.

In 1910, efforts to develop a seaport district within Jamaica Bay began, with developers initiating the dredging of ports. While the city approved the construction of multiple piers in 1918, only one was ultimately built. This pier, constructed to receive landfill for other proposed piers, extended one mile northeast and was 700 feet wide.

By the 1920s, despite the decline, two factories and several residents persisted on Barren Island. A municipal ferry service to the Rockaway Peninsula and an extension of Flatbush Avenue were introduced in 1925 as part of a plan to develop Barren Island as a seaport. Proposed changes included converting creeks along the island’s coast into canals, and the city purchased the western part of the island for parkland. These developments provided short-term benefits for remaining residents, facilitating access to work and shopping in “mainland” Brooklyn, as well as offering transportation to Rockaway beaches via ferry.

Abandonment of many buildings occurred by 1928, although the public school and church endured. Three years later, the city acquired 58 acres on the western side of the island, incorporating Main Street and structures on the southwestern side into Marine Park, combined with a 110-acre tract owned by Kings County.

During the island’s final years, a teacher named Jane F. Shaw, dubbed the “Angel of Barren Island” and “Lady Jane” by the press, played a significant role. Shaw, later appointed principal, advocated for the island community, persuading Senator Robert F. Wagner to rename it “South Flatlands” to integrate it with the city. Despite Barren Island being overlooked in the 1930 census, Shaw influenced the United States Census Bureau to count the remaining 416 residents. When New York City parks commissioner Robert Moses ordered residents’ eviction in early 1936, Shaw successfully lobbied for a delayed eviction date to allow students to complete the school year.

Paul Rizzo inaugurated the privately-operated Barren Island Airport in 1927, with subsequent plans emerging for a municipal airport, eventually becoming Floyd Bennett Field, chosen by aeronautic engineer Clarence Chamberlin in 1928. The New York City Department of Docks managed the construction, involving substantial soil filling and leveling. Floyd Bennett Field was officially completed in 1931, while around 400 people still resided on the island.

In 1935, the city acquired a significant portion of the island for Robert Moses’s Marine Park expansion. Attempts to evict remaining residents ensued, with some relocating within the island’s confines. The completion of the Marine Parkway Bridge in 1937 integrated Barren Island with the city.

Floyd Bennett Field transitioned to Naval Air Station New York in 1941, leading to the eviction of the last residents by the Navy in 1942. The Navy’s wartime modifications eradicated all remaining structures and reshaped the landscape, effectively erasing the community’s existence. The site was later transferred to the National Park Service in 1972 as part of the Gateway National Recreation Area.

In subsequent years, Moses extended the former island westward using garbage and topsoil, leading to erosion that exposed debris on the coast. Despite becoming a popular site for beachcombing, the discovery of radiological contamination prompted the indefinite closure of Dead Horse Bay by the National Park Service in August 2020.

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