These creepy, yet beautiful photos are the former leper colony North Brother Island. The one-time quarantine zone and drug addict haven is only 350 yards from the Bronx, but was truly its own world. Located in the appropriately-titled Hell Gate, this ghost town was home to Irish immigrant "Typhoid" Mary Mallon (seen above), a carrier of the once-deadly typhoid virus. Typhoid Mary spent nearly three decades of her life in these ruins until her death in 1938.
North Brother opened in 1885, originally utilized as a quarantine zone before becoming the home for six lepers. It bore witness to arguably America's worst disaster until the 9/11 attacks, the 1904 fire on board the General Slocum which left 1,021 people-mainly women and children-dead during a church trip.
Shut down and abandoned in 1963, it's remained closed to the public ever since. We've included some pictures of the place back in the day, but the current photos are a captivating, yet eerie reminder of the happenings at this lost world.
[via The Daily Mail UK and Gawker]
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