Hospital on Hoffman Island–West Bank, Looking West, Staten Island in the Distance
Lithographer Ferdinand Mayer & Sons American
Not on view
This bird's-eye view shows hospital buildings on an eleven-acre island created using landfill, in 1873, on the former Orchard Shoal. Located in New York's Lower Bay, close to Staten Island's south shore, the new site was named for John Thompson Hoffman, New York's mayor in 1866–68 and state governor in 1869–71. Together with nearby four-acre Swinburne Island, built by 1879, Hoffman Island housed immigrants who were quarantined if they showed signs of infectious disease when landing at Ellis Island.