Artistic Inversions of Isolation and Confinement: Public Art, Architecture, and the Liberation of Space on Roosevelt Island

Abstract

Blackwell's Island, now called Roosevelt Island, was originally an isolated location between Manhattan and Queens used to confine petty criminals, the mentally disabled, and those with serious illnesses. Many of these were ethnic minorities labeled as "undesirables." The island was a microcosm of the exclusion of ethnic and disabled groups and of ongoing debates as to who was an American. The architect James Renwick designed the Smallpox Hospital to embrace principles of humane care for others in the same style as St. Patrick's Cathedral, symbolically integrating Blackwell's with Manhattan. While islands with similar histories were abandoned, Roosevelt Island's proximity to Manhattan brought urban renewal and transformed the asylum into an apartment complex. Softly lit ruins extend the Manhattan nightscape, and public art celebrates freedoms denied earlier residents. Like the inversions of Louis Kahn, Roosevelt Island is itself an inversion, connected now to Manhattan and home to many foreign-born commuters from the United Nations. Cornell Tech, on the site of the old penitentiary, aptly named its final building the Bridge. Now "a little Manhattan," the island's public art bridges the gulf between exclusionary spaces of the past and the ongoing commentary on a more inclusive American identity.