"Today, it's got several high-rise residential structures, parks, two hospitals for the chronically ill, a tramway that connects it to Manhattan, and a footbridge that links it to Queens. But what fascinates some of us most are its bones."
"Skeletons?" Chapman asked.
"Not human ones. The remnants of the unusual buildings that dominated the landscape here a hundred years ago-well, almost two hundred years ago. As New York grew into a metropolis, it experienced all the social problems and ills that we connect with urban America today-crime, poverty, disease, mental illness. By 1800, the city fathers came up with the idea of walled institutions to confine the sources of trouble. The compound at Bellevue housed contagious yellow-fever patients and syphilitics, and Newgate Prison, in Greenwich Village, was home to rapists and highway robbers."
"My kind of town." Chapman was riveted.
"And did you know that 116th Street and Broadway was the original site of the Bloomingdale Asylum for the Insane?"
"A nuthouse, right where Columbia stands today?" Mike asked. "Now why doesn't that surprise me?"
"Then it occurred to these urban planners that they didn't need to use the valuable real estate of Manhattan to segregate their untouchables. There were a number of small islands that would relieve the growing city of its criminals and its crazies. So they looked to the river for property to acquire-to Wards and Randall Islands, to North and South Brother Islands, to Rikers and Hart Islands"-her pointer moved across the riverscape- "and the very first one the city purchased, in 1828, was Blackwells.
"From a bucolic family farm, the island was immediately transformed into a village of institutions. Enormous structures, forbidding and secure. A penitentiary, an almshouse for the poor, a charity hospital-"
"That wonderful Gothic building that you see from Manhattan? The one that looks like a castle?"
"No, Alex. That one came a bit later, for a different purpose. And then, of course, there's my pet. The Octagon-the lunatic asylum that was built to replace Bloomingdale's."
Nan walked to her desk chair and opened a drawer, removing from it an oversize notebook with sepia-toned blowups of old photographs. "The asylum was designed to be the largest in the country. It had arteries stretching out in every direction-one to house the most violent of the patients, another for females, a third for the foreign insane."
"Wasn't everyone a foreigner?" Mike asked.
"I think it's always the case, Detective, that some are more alien than others. Did you know that whenever an immigrant was found alone in the streets, unable to communicate because of the language barrier, our benign forefathers just placed him in the asylum until someone could make out what he was saying?
"The other discouraging thing about this place was that there was a very small medical staff. The patients were actually cared for by prisoners from the penitentiaries. I can only imagine the abuses."
"Is the asylum still there?" I asked, studying the photo images of the primitive outbuildings.
"All those wings are gone. What remains today are the ruins of the Octagon Tower. It's a stunning rotunda, built in the Greek Revival style, with an elegant winding staircase, all columned and pedestaled." She showed me the interior photographs, which looked like a shot up five spiraling flights of cast-iron steps. "It was once considered the most elegant staircase in New York. Now that broken frame climbs up to the open sky. Completely deteriorated and neglected."
"I guess the theory of the day was to treat the inmates like animals, but do it with charm."
"Exactly. There were vegetable gardens and willow trees and an ice-skating pond so that the external appearance seemed like an oasis of calm and care. But within the walls, it was truly a madhouse."
"What interests you about it? Why the dig?"
"It's everything an urban anthropologist craves. There aren't many places to burrow into in Manhattan these days, much as I'd like to. This offers a very confined site with a fair amount of known history. We've got records of an early Indian settlement there, before the Colonials came to America. We're already finding those artifacts-tools, pottery, weapons. Then you have the agricultural community which existed there for another century.
"And, of course, the asylum years, for most of the nineteenth century. Remember, many of these patients who were not indigent went there with all their possessions. They were served on china plates, not the tin cups of their almshouse neighbors. When these buildings were all abandoned, much of this stuff got left behind, buried in place. Scores of dignitaries visited the island to see this innovative social welfare setup, and some of them, including de Tocqueville, wrote about it extensively.
"You really must-both of you-come out to see how we work and what we've found. The dig is at a bit of a standstill with this frigid weather we're having, but I can have one of the students tour you around the Octagon. The whole island, if you like."
"We'll take you up on that offer. But we'd also like to talk to you about Lola Dakota, Nan."
"I'll tell you the little that I know," she said, sitting down at her desk and motioning us to take seats opposite her. "Of course, I first met Lola when she was on the Columbia faculty. Bit of a wild card, personally, but a talented scholar."
"Did you socialize with her?" "Not much. Without even knowing about their marital problems, Howard never trusted Ivan very much. He always seemed to be hustling people. Looking for the quick score. We were occasionally invited to the same dinner party, but the four of us never spent any time together."
There was something different about the tone of Nan's responses when she talked about Lola. She did not seem quite as open as she had when discussing the history of New York. "Were you here for the funeral?"
"No. No, I left for London on Friday evening. That was the day she was killed, wasn't it? I didn't learn of her death until one of Howard's phone calls." She fumbled with paper clips in the top drawer of her desk.
"We've only spoken to one of her sisters and a couple of students. What was she like as a colleague or peer?"
"Well, her style was a lot flashier than my own. I wouldn't say that we had much in common." Nan was a brilliant scholar, nationally renowned in her field, and as modest as she was good. "But one-on-one, she was perfectly pleasant to work with. She never confided in me, if that's what you mean. I don't think I had seen her in more than a year after she moved to King's College. It was the Blackwells Island project that brought me into contact with her again."
"How did that get started?" Mike asked. Nan looked at the ceiling and laughed. "Several years of wishful thinking on my part. Hard to remember which of us pushed the idea forward first. Let's see. Winston Shreve helped to organize the plan. He's the head of the anthropology department at King's."
"Have you known him long?"
"Fifteen years. Very impressive credentials, which is why they recruited him for the school. Undergrad and graduate degrees are both Ivy League, if I remember correctly. Spent some time at the Sorbonne. Helped with the excavations at Petra. He's wanted to do something on the island for as long as I have. Like me, one of those New Yorkers in our profession who's always wanted to get his hands in some local dirt, but just keeps watching apartments and office towers get planted on top of every square inch of historical soil that we covet.
"Yes, Winston and I have been talking about digging on the island for as long as I've known him."
"And the others?"
"It was a four-department program. Multidisciplinary, as they like to call it these days. Something for everybody. We each seem to have a special place on the island that attracts us for a different reason. Winston and I run the anthropological courses. My favorite site is the northern tip, from the lighthouse to what remains of the Octagon Tower. Skip Lockhart chairs the American history segment. His heart seems to be attached to the people who passed through here, their stories and what became of them. Thomas Grenier is in charge of the biology students."