Sure, Rat Island was just sold to a Bronx man for $160,000, but it’s not the only lesser-known island you can’t visit nearby. Here’s a handy roundup:
* Rat Island (located between City and Hart Islands): This 2½-acre rock just sold to 71-year-old City Island resident Alex Schibli, who’s always loved swimming back and forth to it and kayaking around it with his wife. The island — which Schibli is considering renaming after his granddaughter, Malina — once housed typhoid victims during the 1800s. Schibli told The Post this week that he has no immediate plans to change the island.
* North Brother Island (located in the East River between The Bronx and Rikers Island): Used as a quarantine starting in 1885, the island was once home to Typhoid Mary and a leper quarantine. “North Brother has one of the most famous quarantined hospitals still standing,” says photographer and historian Ian Ference, who’s working on a book about it. The island is now a heron nesting area maintained by the Parks Department.
* South Brother Island (located in the East River between The Bronx and Rikers Island): Former Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert had a summer home in the early 1900s on this 7-acre island. The island was sold to the city in 2007, and is now also a nesting spot.
* Mill Rock (located in the East River opposite 96th Street): Used for defense in the War of 1812, Mill Rock housed squatters for much of the 1800s, and later was used by the US Army Corps of Engineers. The federal government sold it to the City’s Parks Dept. in 1953 for $25,000. Since hosting an arts festival in 1969, it has been cared for by the Neighborhood Committee for Asphalt Green.
* Hart Island (located to the northeast of City Island): The island’s 101 acres were used by Union troops during the Civil War, after which it was home to a number of facilities, including a mental hospital. The Department of Corrections opened a jail here in 1895, but the prisoners moved to Rikers Island during World War II so the Navy could use the space for barracks. Until 1976, the Phoenix House operated a drug rehab facility here.