Paradise On Earth

Rikers Island sits in the East River at the opening of Bowery Bay. Once it was small and bucolic and green, an 87-acre patch of land owned since 1664 by a family of early Dutch settlers named Rycken. The city bought the island in 1884 and used it as a dump for old metal and cinders. It was one of the first designated dumps in New York. Rikers Island worked as an antidote to the city’s garbage problem until people began to complain about Rikers Island itself. Very soon, it had grown into a 415-acre island ? a mass of garbage on and surrounding the original island … Rats from all over the city came to Rikers Island, arriving on the fleets of garbage scows. Within the island was a huge lake of stagnant water, and the rats lived along the shore, feeding on garbage, drinking in the refuse-infused lake; in its putrid isolation, Rikers Island was a rat utopia.