JAMAICABAY
BARREN ISLANDNo longer technically an island but attached in the 1920s to the bay edge of Flatbush Avenue, this once-rural high ground specialized in recycling animal carcasses, thus helping inspire the name of adjacent Dead Horse Bay. The New York Sanitary Utilization company today might brand itself as a wellness company, rendering grease into soap, but in 1896, when the city moved to stop dumping waste in the harborand awarded a garbage contract to the company, it was criticized by a congressman, who said, “The best work ever done in the matter of garbage consumption was when it burned itself to the ground.”