Unbeknownst to most of the city\'s inhabitants, a rural community of garbage workers once existed on a now-vanished island in New York City.
Author Miriam Sicherman tells the story of a Brooklyn neighborhood lost in the annals of New York City history..
Barren Islanders built businesses, fought fires, demanded a public school and worshipped at churches as they created a quintessentially American community from scratch.
They turned the waste into useful industrial products until their eviction by Robert Moses in 1936, all in the name of progress.
Barren Island was a swampy speck in Jamaica Bay where a motley group of new immigrants and African Americans quietly processed mountains of garbage and dead animals starting in the 1850s.
Unbeknownst to most of the city\'s inhabitants, a rural community of garbage workers once existed on a now-vanished island in New York City
