New York City is comprised of a wide variety of land masses and structures with various degrees of public accessibility.

I am conducting ongoing experiments in 3D photogrammetry processing of the city’s reaches and architectural elements and creating 3D meshes and point clouds from the resulting data.

These experiments are part of a larger exploration of digital historic preservation, lost city histories, and urban ruins.

Renwick Smallpox Hospital
The Renwick Smallpox Hospital, designed by James Renwick, Jr. and opened on Blackwell’s Island (now Roosevelt Island) in 1856, was the first major U.S. hospital dedicated to the care of the smallpox virus. In 1875, management of the hospital was transferred from the City of New York to the Sisters of Charity at St. Vincent’s Hospital and the name of the hospital was changed to Riverside Hospital. In 1886, the hospital closed and the building was repurposed as a nursing school. The building was abandoned in the 1950s and the ruins were granted NYC landmark status in 1976.

North Brother Island
North Brother Island, along with its sibling, South Brother Island, sits between the Bronx and Rikers Island.

North Brother Island is the home of the former Riverside Hospital, a smallpox treatment center and eventual quarantine site for a variety of infectious illnesses. The Island’s most famous resident is perhaps “Typhoid” Mary Mallon, who lived there for two decades until her death in 1938.

North Brother Island is currently abandoned - save for a shorebird sanctuary - and the remnants of its hospital facilities sit amongst heavy overgrowth in disrepair.

Green-Wood Cemetery
Green-Wood Cemetery was founded in 1838 and is now a National Historic Landmark. By the early 1860s, it was the country’s second most popular tourist attraction, drawing 500,000 visitors a year. The popularity of the grounds helped inspire the creation of New York City’s Central and Prospect Parks.

The cemetery is home to more than 560,000 permanent residents.

Hart Island
Hart Island’s recorded history begins in 1864 and includes use as an African-American military training ground, a Union Civil War camp, a psychiatric institution, a tuberculosis sanatorium, a homeless shelter, a boys’ reformatory, a jail, a drug rehabilitation center, and is currently New York City’s only mass burial potter’s field.

The one-mile-long island contains the remains of over one million people, including many who died due to AIDS in the 1980s and from COVID-19 in 2020.

July 2020 - Ongoing