Those who were not sick still had to go to the Quarantine. “If the healthy passengers and crewmen did not develop any symptoms of illness over a specified period of time—the period depending on the disease—they were released,” explains a 2004 article in Public Health Reports.

As for the sick passengers, their clothes were washed immediately. They were then loaded into wagons and brought to one of the hospital buildings. (Interestingly, there was a separate quarantine hospital building for first class passengers, which was described as more of a hotel.)

If they died, they were buried in a cemetery two miles away.

As immigration boomed in the 19th century, the hospital became busier. Throughout the 1850s, two million immigrants came to the city, and the Quarantine sometimes housed a thousand newcomers at a time, according to Public Health Reports.

While the Quarantine was necessary to help prevent outbreaks, the people who lived on Staten Island in the mid-19th century weren’t too happy about having it as a neighbor. A yellow fever outbreak that killed 11 Staten Islanders in 1856 was blamed on the hospital.

Residents of Tompkinsville and other nearby villages felt that the facility hurt the value of their property. They also called out the hospital for carelessly wheeling dead bodies through their town on the way to the cemetery.

In the late 1840s, Staten Island residents convinced the city to move the Quarantine to Sandy Hook in New Jersey, but the plan stalled. For the next decade, residents fought to close and relocate the hospital, but the battle was tied up in legislation.

Finally, in August 1858, tensions hit the breaking point, and “citizens began stockpiling straw, wood, and flammable camphene near the Quarantine,” wrote the Daily News.

On September 1, the local board of health approved a resolution that ended with “Resolved: That this board recommend the citizens of this county to protect themselves by abating this abominable nuisance without delay.”

That night, about 30 men went to the Quarantine, lit a pile of straw mattresses pushed against a building, and watched the facility burn. The next night, the mob had swelled into the hundreds. Arsonists continued to burn down buildings until nothing remained.

“Three fire companies lolled their way to the scene, then stood and watched, claiming their hoses had been cut,” stated the Daily News. “A contingent of harbor policemen who arrived by boat were driven off by boys throwing rocks. City police from across the harbor didn’t even answer the alarms.”

No one in the hospital was killed in the blaze; at the time, only 60 patients were inside. Newspaper headlines talked of the “Quarantine Wars.” Two ringleaders went on trial in front of a Staten Island judge but were acquitted.