Quick answer
City Island is the small fishing-and-boatbuilding community at the northeast edge of the Bronx, a part of Long Island Sound. Named by a landowner who dreamed up a seaport here in 1761, it joined New York City in 1895 for a bridge and is now lined with seafood houses and marinas.
Full transcript
The seaport that almost was
Cross the bridge onto City Island and the traffic falls away like the tide: a mile-and-a-half slip of land at the western end of Long Island Sound, where the stores sell fishing tackle and the air smells of salt and fried fish. The name and the grand street plan came from Benjamin Palmer, who bought the island in 1761 and imagined a rival seaport to New York, laying out shipyards, docks, and public squares before the Revolution drained his capital. Long before him, Lenape families camped on the same shore and left great heaps of oyster and clam shells behind — the island has been feeding people from the water for centuries.
A pocket that stayed a town
The island formally joined New York City in 1895, voting to come in for the price of a bridge to the mainland, and entered the Bronx with the new borough in 1898. In the years after, it built its living on the water the way Palmer had hoped — oystering, ferries, and a real shipbuilding shore, then pleasure boats as the twentieth century went on. Today roughly 4,417 people share the island, and a single main street runs its length past marinas, boatyards, tackle shops, and a long row of seafood restaurants where New Yorkers come to eat by the bay. Locals still joke that anyone born here is a clam digger and anyone who moved in is a mussel sucker.
What to do with a day here
Come late on a warm afternoon and walk City Island Avenue the length of the island, threading between the boatyards and the docks. Sit at a waterside seafood house on Eastchester Bay and watch the skiffs come home while the light goes orange, then wander the marinas as crew members hose down their decks. Count the seafood signs you pass on the mile — locals say the island air is half salt and half that. Follow the road to the southern point and watch the Stepping Stones Light mark the channel; this is the quietest working boat town left inside the five boroughs.