8. Shooter’s Island

Just off of Staten Island, between Newark Bay and the Kill Van Kull, sits Shooter’s Island, a former hunting preserve for wild geese during the colonial era.

After the Revolutionary War, this 43-acre island became an industrialized site with a shipyard and oil refinery. The Townsend-Downey Shipbuilding Company constructed yachts on the island, including a racing yacht for Kaiser Wilheim II and the schooner yacht, Atlantic, which set the record for the fastest transatlantic passage by a monohull in 1905.

Shooter’s Island then became a marine junkyard after World War I, and was eventually abandoned by 1921. Now owned by the City of New York and maintained by the NYC Parks Department, the island remains abandoned to this day.