Heading over the Wards Island Bridge to the island's athletic fields

This standpipe allows water to be pumped up to the viaduct in case of a fire.

This is part of the Project EATS farm (photos) at the Help USA Supportive Employment Center, a homeless shelter that provides its residents with vocational training. Some of the produce grown here is sold to restaurants and Fresh Direct, with the proceeds used to subsidize affordably priced farm stands in low-income and working-class neighborhoods. Food from this farm is also used in the employment center's cafeteria and in its culinary arts training program.

at the Randall's Island Urban Farm (photos), which recently acquired a bicycle-powered huller to process the harvests of "all five of New York City’s rice paddies".

(Despite the name, the farm is actually located on the Wards Island part of Randall's and Wards Islands. But the Randall’s Island Park Alliance refers to the conjoined islands collectively as Randall's Island.)

Overlooking a nearby baseball field, this sculpture "translate[s] the vernacular of the baseball backstop into an ethereal and slightly surreal contemplation of the American home."

The Hell Gate Bridge, seen here from the native plant garden in Wards Island Park, was painted a deep red in the 1990s. But the paint was defective and started fading before the job was even complete, leaving the bridge with the pale, patchy appearance it still boasts today.

The most eye-catching part of the Triborough complex, this suspension bridge connects Queens and Wards Island over the Hell Gate channel of the East River. And speaking of eye-catching, the behemoth at right is Astoria's Shore Towers.

City Pillars

That's the Manhattan Psychiatric Center up ahead. As far as I know, the only people who live on Randall's and Wards Islands are the residents of the psychiatric hospitals and homeless shelters. (The islands' population was listed in the 2010 census as 1,648 people in zero households.)

The islands mostly consist of athletic fields and other parkland, but they're also home to a wastewater treatment plant, the city's fire academy (photos, photos), a state police troop headquarters, the Triborough Bridge toll plazas, and MTA Bridges and Tunnels administrative offices.

The Little Hell Gate Inlet is all that remains of the channel that once separated Randall's and Wards Islands. (To get a sense of how the islands have changed over the years, compare these aerial images from 1924, 1951, and 2012.) The eastern half of the inlet has been restored as the "fully functional salt marsh" you see above. The footbridge in the center of the photo, spanning the inlet, is part of a recreational path that passes through the marsh.

If you've been wondering why Randall's Island has an apostrophe in its name and Wards Island doesn't, I don't have a great answer for you. Both islands are named after former owners, so it seems apostrophes would be in order in both cases to indicate that the names are possessive. But possessive apostrophes have long been frowned upon by the US Board on Geographic Names, setting an oft-followed precedent for their removal from place names across the country. NYC is inconsistent with its apostrophes (although you'll almost never see one in a street name), and you can find both Randall's and Wards Islands written with and without apostrophes on different city signs and maps. But for some reason, the city government is more often than not inclined to include the apostrophe in Randall's and omit it from Wards. (See, for example, Randall's Island Park and Wards Island Park.)

Named after corporate raider Carl Icahn, this track and field stadium on Randall's Island opened in 2005 and has already had a world record set here, by Usain Bolt in the 100 meters in 2008. The stadium was built in place of the demolished Downing Stadium, which had seen its own share of notable events over the decades, starting with Jesse Owens qualifying for the 1936 Olympics on the night it opened. (Wearing Ohio State colors, he "flashed over the Randalls Island Stadium cinders like a scarlet comet", according to the next day's NY Times.)

Ebbets Field, the beloved former home of the dear departed Brooklyn Dodgers, was knocked down in 1960, and its lights were later installed at Downing Stadium. I've read that Downing's lights were reused here at Icahn, but I can't find any reliable source for that claim. Even if they were reused, it sounds like most of the original Ebbets lights had been replaced by the time Downing was demolished.

You're looking at two of the four inverted bowstring truss spans that formerly carried the Hell Gate viaduct across Little Hell Gate, the now filled-in channel that once separated Randall's and Wards Islands. To get a sense of how the islands have changed over the years, compare these aerial images from 1924, 1951, and 2012.