Davids Island, just off New Rochelle in Long Island Sound, was used by the U.S. military from the Civil War through the Cold War. Fort Slocum held Confederate prisoners, served in New York’s coastal defenses and processed soldiers heading overseas during both world wars. During World War II, Private Willie Lee Duckworth developed the marching cadence that became known as the “Jody Call” there. After the base closed in 1967, its abandoned buildings were eventually demolished.

I had been photographing the abandoned islands around New York for decades when I reached Fort Slocum on Davids Island. Its layers of military history appealed to the same instinct that had taken me to Ellis Island and North Brother Island as a teenager: an island close to the city that most people could see but knew almost nothing about.