Rat Island Sold For Scanty $160K

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Published on October 03, 2011, 8:19 am
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Accessible only by boat and unused for decades, the 2.5-acre rocky outcrop off the Bronx was valued at $265,000, but sold for $160,000 to an unidentified man who can see it from his back garden on nearby City Island.

Ozzie Crisalli, co-owner of Syracuse Realty, who is in charge of the island’s sale, had called the auction “an opportunity to own a unique piece of real estate with a history dating back over 350 years”.

Reports claimed that Ivanka Trump, daughter of Donald, was interested. Although she told a gossip columnist: “There’s not a lot that’s undiscovered in the tri-state area. So when there is, there’s usually a reason why it’s undiscovered.” Mr Crisalli disagreed, saying: “The island is serene and the views fantastic”.

Rat Island not only has an unappealing name, but an equally unappealing history. It was used in the mid-17th century as a typhoid quarantine hospital and was called the “Pelham Pesthouse”.

It was a writers’ and artists’ colony in the early 1900s and was owned by Red Brennen, a retired marine contractor who bought it for about $5,000 in 1972 and used it to store equipment and salvage barges.

Mr Brennen had taken potential buyers to the island in a small motorboat and emphasised that in summer, children swim off the island and canoeists take picnics.

One disadvantage, however, could be the tide, which has an eight-foot rise so the island’s size decreases dramatically during the day.

 

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Jonas Bronck is the pseudonym under which we publish and manage the content and operations of The Bronx Daily.™ | Bronx.com - the largest daily news publication in the borough of "the" Bronx with over 1.5 million annual readers. Publishing under the alias Jonas Bronck is our humble way of paying tribute to the person, whose name lives on in the name of our beloved borough.