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Brooklyn's Barren Island: A Forgotten History
Unbeknownst to most of the city's inhabitants, a rural community of garbage workers once existed on a now-vanished island in New York City. Barren Island was a swampy speck in Jamaica Bay where a motley group of new immigrants and African Americans quietly processed mountains of garbage and dead animals starting in the 1850s. They turned the waste into useful industrial products until their eviction by Robert Moses, in the name of progress, in 1936. Barren Islanders built businesses, fought fires, demanded a public school and worshipped at churches as they created a quintessentially American community from scratch. Author Miriam Sicherman tells the story of a Brooklyn neighborhood lost in the annals of New York City history.
160 pages, Paperback
Published November 18, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 18, 2019
This is a great portrait of a community of people who were an essential part of New York's history. I knew nothing about Barren Island despite having lived in New York for decades. Miriam Sicherman captures something essential about this group of pioneering immigrants who created a self-sufficient community from scratch. It's a quick, engaging, well-researched read that was undoubtedly a labor of love for the author. Highly recommended.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews