On The Water: Long Island Sound’s Most Peculiar Private Island

HUDSON VALLEY, NY — Like something between a parade float and the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney, Rat Island earns a double take from boaters and motorists near City Island.

The Long Island Sound is home to hundreds of islands. Long Island, Hart and City Island might be world famous. Other islands in the South Sound archipelago, however, are little more than bird-poop-covered rocks only visible during low tide.

That isn’t to say the lesser known islands in the region don’t have a rich history in their own right. North Brother Island in the East River once served as the quarantine for Typhoid Mary. Tiny Swinburne Island and neighboring Hoffman Island were critical to WWII anti-submarine defenses.

Even barren Rat Island, near the north tip of City Island, once served as a sanitarium known as the “Pelham Pesthouse” and later a bustling artists colony, but the two-and-a-half-acre private island never really came into its own until it was purchased by City Island resident and retired Port Authority engineer Alex Shcibli. The now 78-year-old purchased the piece of real estate at auction in 2011 for $160,000. At the time, he told reporters that his first order of business would be to change the moniker of the unfortunately named islet in the City Island Harbor.

Shcibli freely admitted that his purchase was more of a vanity project than it was a sound real estate investment. “Rat Island is a flat rock but it’s a very special rock, at least to me," he told reporters when he purchased the pricey rock at auction six years ago. "Some developers might build something on top of the island if they got their hands on it, but I believe it should be conserved, kept as is.”

Shcibli had floated the idea of renaming his plot of rocky paradise Malina Island in honor of his granddaughter. Maritime officials were considerably less than enthusiastic about altering navigation charts to accommodate the proud grandfather and the name Rat Island remains the official designation of the craggy (and perplexingly rat-free) island .

For the first few years, very little changed on the tiny speck on the Pelham island chain. Shcibli posted a "No Trespassing Private Property" sign and worked to maintain the island which had become a popular, but illicit party spot prior to his stewardship. In addition to having a private refuge for kayaking, family gatherings and cookouts just yards from his City Island home, Shcibli was content to peer out his kitchen window safe in the knowledge that his realm extended to the tiny, but precious speck of land in the Long Island Sound.

But in 2016, to celebrate the 725th Swiss National Day, Shcibli, who is a Swiss expat, commissioned artist Gerry Hoffstetter to recreate the look and feel of the Swiss town of Altdorf on his private island. The resulting life-sized diorama constructed on the island comes complete with a steel street sign, the Swiss flag and a polyester replica of the William Tell statue found in the village square.

Rat Island might not have the tourist appeal of Liberty Island or Ellis Island, but for City Island residents and Orchard Beach sunbathers, this peculiar monument is a uniquely New York testament to the American dream.