The Bronx · Bronx County
South Brother Island
NYC Parks
- Location
- In the East River between the Bronx and Rikers Island
- Size
- 21.11 acres
- Hours
- Not publicly accessible (wildlife preserve)
- Type
- NYC Parks
South Brother Island is a 21.11-acre uninhabited island in the East River between the Bronx mainland and Rikers Island, designated as a nature preserve and one of the most important colonial waterbird nesting sites in the New York Harbor ecosystem.
The island supports the largest wading bird rookery in the New York City area, with nesting populations of black-crowned night herons, snowy egrets, great egrets, and other colonial waterbirds. The island's isolation from human disturbance makes it ideal for nesting.
South Brother Island was once the site of a summer home owned by Colonel Jacob Ruppert, the owner of the New York Yankees who signed Babe Ruth. Ruppert's summer home burned down in 1909, and nature has since reclaimed the entire island.
North Brother Island, adjacent to South Brother, is famous as the quarantine site where Typhoid Mary (Mary Mallon) was isolated for 23 years. North Brother also served as the site of the General Slocum disaster in 1904, when over 1,000 people died in a steamboat fire.
South Brother Island represents one of the most fascinating intersections of urban ecology and New York history: a wildlife sanctuary in the East River where herons nest on an island once owned by the man who bought Babe Ruth, next to the island where Typhoid Mary was imprisoned.