Although it's now off-limits to the public and currently serves as a bird sanctuary in the Harbor Heron Preserves project, North Brother Island was once a quarantine zone for people with infectious diseases.
North Brother Island held several cases of smallpox, tuberculosis, and other diseases, but the most famous resident was undoubtedly Typhoid Mary.
Mary Mallon, an Irish immigrant who worked as a cook, was visibly healthy to an inspection. After following a trail of fevers and infections in 1906, researcher George Soper connected the dots to Mallon.
Mary was an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever, meaning that she carried the disease without suffering from the symptoms. She was forcibly quarantined (twice) on North Brother Island until her death from a stroke there in 1938. She was 69 years old.
View a recent photo essay of the North Brother Island ruins.
