Welfare Island FDNY Training Academy Pictures (1964)

[mack]

1964 FDNY Welfare Island Training:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/95364995@N00/sets/72157604056697044/with/2315252460/
(From Roosevelt Island Historical Society)

Currently Roosevelt Island (renamed in 1973), previously called Welfare Island (1921-1973), Blackwell's Island (1828-1921), Manning's Island (1666-1686) and originally Hog Island (1637-1666). 

Blackwell's Island, was home to a NY Penitentiary, a Charity Hospital for the poor, a Small Pox Hospital, an Almshouse (shelter for the destitute), a correctional Workhouse, a Lunatic Asylum and Combined Engine Company 49.


Island History:
http://www.correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/nycdoc/html/blakwel1.html)

 

[Ghetto Gladiator]

Mack...what a perfect place to train fireman............

 

[mack]

L-103(ret) - I was thinking the same thing.  Inmates, lunatics (pardon the expression but that's what they used), destitute and homeless.  Nice history and buildings for FDNY to move into.  Built character for probies. 

It must have also been weird for Engine 49 members to have to take a ferry across to work every tour in the middle of all that for all the years they operated on the island.