Governors Island: New York for explorers: Manhattan’s small island escapes

You don’t want to meet other tourists all the time in New York? No problem! After all, the city has many more small islands than Manhattan. Governors or City Island, for example. There are no cars, hardly any noise and plenty of space.

–

Sometimes you forget that Manhattan is an island, and just one of many. No, we don’t mean these own worlds, Chinatown, Little Italy or the island of the Ukrainians in the East Village. Sometimes you forget in the dark canyons, in which the air stands in summer and you don’t know where to go, that New York is not on the water. But in the water.

New York City has more islands than the Canaries. More ports, more beaches, more seagulls. 30, 40 islands and islets hang around the four big ones like dinghies around the mother ship. How many exactly? Depends on the water level, some disappear in high water. On most maps, these small areas are not even marked by name. Some are uninhabited, some are only inhabited by birds. Some are celebrated, others are penalized, some belong to everyone, others are private.

But everything that New York, the city of longing, is and ever wanted to be, for better or for worse, can be found on these islands like in a mirror cabinet: the dream of arrival, the dream of freedom, the dream of advancement, hope, that Failure and even nameless death.

Excursion for one US dollar to Governors Island

So take a dollar, for example. Not a lot of money in New York today. A ferry trip to Governors Island costs so little, and the journey takes only seven minutes – to another world, to another time. The small island off the southern tip of Manhattan was once the seat of Dutch traders who bought the island from the Lenape Indians. Later it was taken by the English and called New York. New York was later relocated to Manhattan for reasons of space, controversial at the time, but now very plausible. The British were chased away, the Americans came. The struggle for independence was reflected in Governors Island. And the Cold War began here – with the peace talks between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988.

Now you can wander around there. In old Castle Williams, which also served as a military prison, peek into communal cells and with Bruce or Bill or John, who accompany the guests in old uniforms, look from the roof to Manhattan, to Ellis Island or to the Statue of Liberty Island. You can peek through the porch windows into the Admiral’s House, once the quarters of the island’s commander in chief. You can get lost in the ghost settlements that generations of soldiers and coast guards have left behind, some in a rather dilapidated state, some a bit renovated, and wonder why they are simply empty. Empty. Just the word referring to real estate should be listed in New York City.

The lonely island during the week

During the week you are almost completely alone here. Just a few squirrels whiz down the stairs and the manicured lawn, sit on the picnic tables and look as if they are waiting for the show that we call history to finally go on. At the weekend, however, Governors Island is an amusement park that people flock to to spread out, a children’s playground, a vanishing point for those who need space, who want to think, who can no longer see cars, no longer hear construction noise. At the weekend, Governors Island is not a place of the past, but one of the present and the future, full of music, full of art, full of children.

From Ellis Island, on which around twelve million immigrants passed the immigration authorities between 1892 and 1954, Manhattan has always been a place of longing close enough to touch, but still so far away. On North Brother Island off the Bronx, veterans were housed and later drug addicts. Roosevelt Island, the small island with the big name, was home to an insane asylum, of all things. Rikers Island is still a jail today. And the ticket to Hart Island is only valid for most people in one direction: It is the island of the dead, home to “Potter’s Field”, a huge poor cemetery. Almost a million people are buried here, with around 1,500 new ones every year, infants, stillborns, homeless people, strangers who no one asked about. The dead are stacked in trenches, dug up by prisoners, three coffins high, two coffins wide.

To City Island in the north

City Island, east of the Bronx, is a village even on weekends. An island that can be reached by metro and then, a few stops, by bus that jerks over a bridge. An island, 800 meters narrow, 2.4 kilometers long, with a main road and dead ends to the right and left and around 4,000 islanders, a whole series of them artists and bon vivants.

One of them is Carl Wells. He’s lived here for almost 60 years and he doesn’t want to be anywhere else. Wells loves the tranquility and security of the island where many families have lived for generations, he loves the sea and he loves danger. Because when the annual storms rage, the island is always threatened. Five years ago Hurricane “Sandy” destroyed many existences, but everything was rebuilt together. Wells survived him in his boat, which he lives on and which he did not allow himself to be evacuated from.

On the weekends, the Bronx come, workers, employees, common people. They eat lobster and shrimp in one of the seafood restaurants, they stroll down the main street, they board their little boats in one of the three marinas on City Island, where berths start at 80 dollars a month. “They are living their dream of America,” says Wells, “and that always meant hunting and fishing.” Those who don’t have a boat and are just beginning to dream end up at Wells: Twice a day he starts fishing from Jack’s Bait Shop with New Yorkers who are tired of civilization. A day on the water gives people the strength to survive a week in a city like New York. Wells thinks anyway.

In the evening it gets quieter. The metro has taken the day visitors away, and the islanders stand by the garden fences and chat. Behind them lies the island, which is slowly falling to rest, in front of them the sea, and in the distance the lights of the seething metropolis of New York.

–