CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 9/29/2016

Silent Beaches, Untold Stories: New York City's Forgotten Waterfront

Joel Meyerowitz's 2006 photograph of North Brother Island, NYC, is reproduced from Silent Beaches, Untold Stories, launching tonight at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn. Located in the East River between Rikers Island and the Port Morris section of the Bronx, the island was once "either a refuge or a hell for those suffering from various afflictions," according to author/editor Elizabeth Albert. Its most infamous resident was Typhoid Mary. More than 600 bodies washed up there following the 1904 sinking of the General R. Slocum steamship. It later housed post-GI Bill college students and teenage drug addicts in rehab. Abandoned since 1963, it is currently "a sanctuary for birds, including black crowned night herons, great and snowy egrets, and glossy ibis, all making their homes amongst the ruins."