The New York Times had a photo essay on this island in its magazine yesterday, starting at p. 35. It has been uninhabited for fifty years, but it once had an isolation hospital; Typhoid Mary had lived there. It once housed GIs on the GI Bill, and the last time it was inhabited, drug addicts. Wikipedia says that Mercury Rev's Chasing a Bee video was shot here, and Life After People, Episode 8, used it to show how the world would look if all the people were killed off. Wikipedia also has interesting information about South Brother Island.