![]() Residents have included numerous United Nations employees, attracted by the European-like setting and reasonable rents. Like Cornell, Roosevelt Island has a strong international history. The asylum's octagon tower burned in the 1980s, but it has been restored and is worth a trip north to have a look, along with the lighthouse and the swirling waters of Hell Gate that surround it. In its previous incarnation, the Octagon was the very same insane asylum that sent Charles Dickens running back to England appalled at what he had seen in the United States. The Octagon Building on the north end of the Island has two new wings that contain 500 apartments with mostly young, affluent residents. In 1989 new buildings arrived: four rental buildings, called Manhattan Park, and a building for low-income residents north of the original village and across from the garage, post office and supermarket. View of Roosevelt Island, right, the East River, and part of Manhattan's Upper East Side. But commuting aloft four minutes each way afforded us the chance to meet our neighbors and develop what we called "tram relationships." Today, we also have the choice of the subway though no "subway relationships!" Our dependence on it was annoying when a mechanical problem or lightning temporarily suspended operation and forced us to beg a cabbie to take us home. ![]() In time, Eastwood was transformed by a private owner into Roosevelt Landings with updated kitchens, bathrooms and, sadly, rents.Īlthough the Island has long had a bridge to Long Island City, Queens, our primary transportation for over a decade was the tramway. Accordingly, the many-winged residential building, Eastwood, was heavily subsidized, and the buildings on the west side of the street (Westview and Island House) had not-unrealistic rents for middle-class residents. The original residences, built in the mid 1970s under the Mitchell-Lama program, were designed to provide housing for a wide swath of socio-economic groups and not coincidentally to establish a comfortable place for people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. Roosevelt Island and Cornell - which, before long will begin establishing its new tech campus on the island - have some interesting things in common. The Roosevelt Island Red Bus passes under the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge. (In fact years ago a purse-snatcher was apprehended wandering the north end of the island trying to figure out how to get off this thing.) I didn't miss having lots of peoples after all. Soon I was to discover the air is fresher, our snow is cleaner and stays longer, and crime is rare. But from the first day of my life here I was thrilled: It was clean, quiet, and in the early days, especially, the island had a bounty of beautiful green spaces for kids and adults to wander in and enjoy. Where were all the peoples indeed! I worried as someone who loves the city and its busyness if I would transition happily to this quiet spot. On our first foray to the island my daughter, age 2½, looked up from her stroller and asked in a bewildered tone, "Where are all the peoples?" We had watched our local farmers' market on 59th give way to make room for construction of the Roosevelt Island Tramway, so we decided that Roosevelt Island was the logical place for us to look. ![]() In 1981 my then-husband and I decided to leave our Manhattan apartment on the busy corner of 61st Street and Second Avenue. ![]()
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