I was browsing through the site Gawker and came upon this amazing story about the abandoned and forgotten North Island, which was once a quarantine hospital for smallpox, TB, and which once housed the infamous Typhoid Mary. Apparently a photographer named Richard Nickel Jr. went on the island and took photographs of the ruins--from the old hospital now overrun with vines, to the cage-like solitary rooms used for heroin addicts in their withdrawal, to the lonely collapsed seats of the school auditorium. The images are incredibly sad but beautiful too.
His blog, named The Kingston Lounge, has the entire photo essay complete with the whole, rich story of the island. It is one of the most fascinating things I've read in a while.
I can't wait to explore his other photo essays of his other visits to historical sites; I'm now a big fan of 'guerrilla preservation and urban archeology' (pretty cool term, no?).
