In 1903, the New York City Department of Health opened a quarantine facility at Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island in the East River, in an attempt to isolate tuberculosis patients. The Hospital moved from Blackwell’s Island (now Roosevelt Island) to North Brother Island in 1885.

North Brother Island was the future home of Mary Mallon, a.k.a. “Typhoid Mary. Mallon who was confined to the island two separate times. She died on the Island in 1938. The Riverside Hospital closed in 1963.