Columbia Island (New York)

About

Columbia Island (formerly Little Pea Island), is an island in the Long Island Sound and part of New Rochelle, New York, United States. It is situated off the south-eastern coast of Davids Island, immediately adjacent to Pea Island. Before sea walls and other structures were built on the island, the exposed rock varied in size from about one acre to 175 square feet depending on the tide.

It was once owned by the Iselin family who sold it to the Huguenot Yacht Club along with Pea Island in 1936. Three years later, the club sold Little Pea Island to the Columbia Broadcasting System, which appropriately renamed it "Columbia". As a result of engineering surveys designating the area around New Rochelle and Port Washington on Long Island Sound as the ideal locality for a radio transmitter to serve the metropolitan New York area, new stations were constructed on these sites by both the Columbia ("CBS") and National ("NBC") broadcasting systems in 1940. CBS purchased the island as the site for a new broadcast antenna tower for WCBS (then known by the call sign WABC).