History / An Island Named for Roosevelt

History, also, An Island Named for Roosevelt. . , History , Originally called Minnahannock, the island was eventually acquired by the Blackwell family. In 1828, the City of New York purchased the island as a site for prisons and hospitals in order to capitalize on the island's isolation to keep certain people, "our standing army of paupers, criminals, and sick poor," the reformer Jacob Riis called them in the 1890s, nearby, but distantly apart. That year the City renamed it Welfare Island., An Island Named for Roosevelt , By the late 1960s, most of the institutional buildings on the island had fallen out of use and New York City, in partnership with New York State, saw an opportunity on the two-mile long plot of land to redevelop it into affordable housing. Fittingly, the island's name was changed to Franklin D. Roosevelt Island. Today, it is home to fourteen thousand residents., Freedom of Speech and Expression | Freedom of Worship , Freedom from Want | Freedom from Fear .