For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Roosevelt Island was home to institutions New York City wanted separated from the rest of the population: a penitentiary, workhouse, insane asylum and hospitals for contagious diseases. Surviving remnants included James Renwick Jr.’s Smallpox Hospital and the Octagon of the former asylum, whose conditions were famously exposed by journalist Nellie Bly. The island was later extensively redeveloped as a residential community, with several historic structures preserved or incorporated into new uses.

When I photographed the abandoned Smallpox Hospital on Roosevelt Island in 1983 there were no fences around it. To photograph from the upper floors I climbed a broken staircase and tied a rope to a banister in case the floor gave way. Returning to the island later, I found a landscape transformed by housing, parks and preservation, while the ruin I had explored had been stabilized as a monument.