Roosevelt Island, an Evolving Urban Model

In this walk up and down “the sliver in the east river”, we’ll survey the palimpsest of the layers of the island’s history, from a Lenape settlement, to the Dutch, the English Blackwell family farm; the legacy and memory of eight awful nineteenth and early twentieth century institutions
Including, hospitals for disease, and a women’s insane asylum. Reimagined in a bold masterplan commissioned in the 1960s and a series of “sensitive” megastructural housing projects completed by 1975, when funding ran out. We’ll see the Louis Kahn’s FDR Memorial and the Nellie Blye memorial. The island expanded its residential housing population through the last decades. We’ll also tour the Cornell Tech campus. Take the Roosevelt Island Tram from 2nd Ave and 60th Street.