the construction of the Triborough Bridge, the island was used by hospi-
tals and corrective institutions for children.

Ward's Island

Same transit directions as for Randall's Island; then by Little Hell Gate Bridge from
Randall's Island.

Ward's Island, approximately square-shaped, is one of the stepping
stones used by the Triborough Bridge and the New York Connecting Rail-
road (Hell Gate) Bridge in crossing the East River. Approaching from
the north along nearly parallel lines, both structures swing east from
Ward's into Queens.

Slowly, as the Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane, which
has occupied Ward's for more than forty years, is finally evacuated, the
Department of Parks is retrieving the island's 254I/2 acres for recreational
use. By 1943 the eighty buildings that form this institutional community
will have been entirely emptied.

A Municipal Sewage Disposal Plant, one of the three largest in
the world, occupies 77 1/2 acres on the northeast corner of the island; it was
put into operation by the Department of Sanitation October, 1937. Thirty-
seven acres in the southeast corner between the bridges have been cleared
by razing ten two-story buildings, erected in 1917 as a military base hos-
pital. This portion will be opened as a park in 1939.

Construction of a new vertical-lift footbridge, 790 feet long, from the
foot of 103d Street (Manhattan), has been proposed by the Department
of Parks to make the island more readily accessible, and new pedestrian
ramps from Triborough Bridge are planned. Meanwhile, all traffic uses the
low bridge from Randall's Island across Little Hell Gate.

The British used Ward's Island as a military post during the Revolution.
Its early names were Tenkenas, Buchanan's Island, and Great Barn Island,
a corruption of Great Barent; but when the Ward brothers, Jasper and
Bartholomew, bought it after the Revolution and divided it into farms,
the present name came into occasional use. A cotton mill that operated
there during the War of 1812 was connected to the foot of East 114th
Street (Manhattan) by a bridge, the first over the East River. When the
mill closed after the war, the island was deserted.

In 1840 one hundred thousand bodies were moved from the site of
Bryant Park to a new potter's field on Ward's. In 1847 a State Emigration