One main street runs the length of a small island of boatyards and seafood restaurants, reached by a single bridge.
What City Island looks like
City Island is a mile and a half long and half a mile wide, in Long Island Sound off the northeastern Bronx. One bridge connects it to the mainland. Anyone born on the island is a clam digger. Everyone else is a mussel sucker.
Nearly every business is on , which runs down the middle. Most of them are seafood restaurants and antique shops. The side streets are short and most end at the water.
Oystering was the first big trade here. By the late 1800s nearly a hundred island families lived off the oyster beds, and when the trade failed the yards turned to boatbuilding. Five sloops built on the island defended the America's Cup between 1958 and 1980. Ratsey and Lapthorn, the British sailmakers, cut sails on from 1902. Boats are no longer built here. The yacht clubs and marinas stayed.
Most of the houses are wood. The at 30 Centre Street, clapboard Stick style from the late 1880s, was built by the contractor Samuel Booth. It was landmarked in 2017, along with a 1930 Sears catalogue bungalow on Pell Street built for Captain John H. Stafford.
The 1897 public school building on Fordham Street is now the . It opens on weekend afternoons.
An amusement park and resort opened at , the southern tip, in 1887. The big seafood restaurants are there now. A man who cleans lobster tanks on the island told The Seattle Times in 2002 that it "likes to think of itself as a little Nantucket."
Films shot in City Island
The 2009 film City Island is set on the island and was mostly shot there. The 1993 film A Bronx Tale shot a scene in the parking lot of Johnny's Reef at . It also put the old City Island Bridge on screen, and the causeway bridge replaced that span in 2017. The summer house in the 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums is at the end of , and the same house appears in the 1962 film Long Day's Journey Into Night. Michael Douglas came to the for the 2009 film Solitary Man, and the series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee later filmed a webisode there.
City Island, 2009
Andy García and Julianna Margulies play members of a family living on City Island, and the film keeps the island's real name. It won the Audience Favorite Award at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival.
What City Island can double for
City Island can stand in for a New England fishing town and a small town main street.
