U Thant Island

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U Thant Island from the north, with the Williamsburg Bridge in the background.

U Thant Island, or officially Belmont Island, is a tiny 100 x 200 foot (30 x 60 metre) artificial island in New York City's East River, just to the south of Roosevelt Island. It lies across from United Nations headquarters at 42nd Street, and is legally considered a part of the Borough of Manhattan and New York County. The islet is currently protected as a sanctuary for migrating birds, including a small colony of Double-crested Cormorant, and access is prohibited to the public.

The island has its origins in the 1890s as a side-effect of the construction by William Steinway, of piano manufacturer Steinway & Sons, of trolley tunnels under the river to link bustling Manhattan to his eponymous company town in Steinway, Queens. The island was built up on the existing granite outcrop Man-o'-War Reef with excess landfill from a shaft dug down the reef to the tunnels. But Steinway died before his tunnels' completion, and it was financier August Belmont, Jr. who finished the project in 1907, leaving the finished islet as a bonus. The Steinway Tunnels are still in use as part of the 7-Flushing Line (see for construction details) in the New York Subway, and trains still pass directly beneath the island many times a day. Belmont Island, after the financier, became (and remains) the legal name of the island.

The little inconvenient island was unused and almost forgotten for nearly a century, until in 1977 it was adopted by employees at nearby UN headquarters following the controversial guru Sri Chinmoy, who served as an interfaith chaplain there. The group, called Sri Chinmoy: The Peace Meditation at the United Nations, leased the islet from New York State, greened its surface and unofficially renamed it after Burmese Buddhist United Nations Secretary General U Thant, a friend of Chinmoy. As a name, U Thant Island, though unofficial, has stuck, and is today that most commonly used. The islet is now the site of a thirty-foot "oneness arch" preserving personal items of the island's namesake.

Caples Jefferson Architects proposed for The New York Times Capsule, the New York Times year 2000 time capsule, an obelisk on U Thant Island, designed to gradually disintegrate over the next millennium. Another entrant won the competition, but there may still be some effort to accomplish the project.

In 2004, during the height of the National Republican Party convention, NYC artist and film-maker Duke Riley [1], who has travelled to various "abandoned" islands around the New York City area, rowed a boat with a friend to the island under cover of darkness, proclaimed it a sovereign nation and hoisted a 21 foot long pennant depicting two electric eels from the island's tower. On their return voyage in daylight, they were apprehended by a U.S. Coast Guard boat, but were not arrested. The entire incident was videotaped for a piece Duke has entitled "Belmont Island (SMEACC)" [2]; the acronym standing for "Situation, Mission, Execution, and Command Control" [3]. The incident appears to have been more of an artistic, rather than political, statement.