Epstein Island Map and Buildings: What Stands on Little St. James

What the Epstein Island map shows: the documented structures

Little St. James is a private island off the East End of St. Thomas, and even its area is reported with a spread: 71.5 acres in DPNR and court files reviewed by the Virgin Islands Daily News, 71.6 acres in the 2022 listing, 70 to 75 acres in most national coverage, with outliers up to 78 ^6,3,4. Location, ownership and visiting are covered in the island article; this one is about what stands on it.

Knowledge about the buildings comes from four kinds of sources: DPNR permit records reviewed by NBC News in 2019, which give sizes and dates for the main house, the 2007 expansion plan, the 2009 pool pavilion and the 2010 music pavilion ^1,11; the 2022 sales listing ^2,3; government images taken in 2020 and released by House Oversight Committee Democrats in December 2025 ^12,13; and satellite comparisons and footage from boats and drones ^9,14.

None of these sources amounts to an official plan of the island. The Justice Department's 2026 data sets reportedly include island blueprints and drone footage, but nothing used here reproduces a full survey ¹⁵.

Positions are documented only in part. The striped building stands on a lookout point at what NBC News calls the southeastern edge of the island, while some secondary sources say the southwestern point ¹. Two large cockatoo statues line the path from the dock to the house ^16,17, and tennis courts, pools, the helipad and the guest villas are visible on 2023 satellite imagery ¹⁴.

The Epstein Island temple: permit, dome, statues and what remains unproven

The building people mean when they search for the Epstein Island temple stands on a lookout point at the island's edge ¹. It was permitted in 2010 as a music pavilion: the DPNR application drawings show an octagonal 3,500 sq ft pavilion housing a grand piano, with 1,800 sq ft permitted for the music room ¹. Workers told AP it was a music room with a grand piano and acoustic walls ⁴.

What went up differs from the drawings. Instead of an octagon with a 10-foot facade, a stone exterior and several front windows, the finished building is a rectangular cube with no windows or stone on its front that appears to rise at least 30 feet; a DPNR official noted the difference in shape, NBC found no evidence that DPNR inspected or approved the structure as built, and the records show no further permit requests for Little St. James after 2011 ¹.

As built it is a white cube with broad blue horizontal stripes on a two-tier stone terrace; a 2015 aerial video shows a large gold dome on top and gold-painted statues at its front ^4,24. The dome was gone by 2019 and was not replaced; AP wrote that it flew off during the 2017 hurricane season, NBC quoted locals who blamed Hurricane Maria on 20 September 2017, and a tabloid report cited by others claims staff removed it ahead of the storm ^4,1.

The interior became visible only through the Justice Department's December 2025 release: an unfinished room with a ceiling painted as a cloudy sky with animals, constellations and seafaring imagery, an empty carved floor-to-ceiling bookshelf, exposed cement-board panels and two shrink-wrapped twin mattresses near a large double window ²⁵. When the photographs were taken is not stated.

Tunnel claims arose from 2019 drone videos and the building's odd design; NBC News and Newsweek call them conspiracy theories, and NBC reported in March 2026 that it has not been confirmed any tunnels were built ^5,14. The only documented below-ground plans lie elsewhere: the 2007 theater under the main house's west wing ¹¹ and the 'underwater office & pool' in the 2017 application for Great St. James ²⁶. What is documented is a permit for a music room; nothing beneath it is.

After the 2023 sale the building changed on the surface: videos filmed by trespassers in early 2026 and reviewed by NBC News show it painted over and boarded up, with white gargoyle statues scattered around the island; permit records still identify it as a music pavilion, and its final use remains undocumented ⁵. Who ordered the repainting, and when, no major outlet has confirmed. After the owning entity sued trespassers in the Superior Court of the Virgin Islands in May 2026, a property spokesperson said that going beyond the beach or entering any structure 'will be prosecuted without exception' ²³.

Main residence, guest cabanas and pools

AP described the main house in July 2019 as a stone mansion with cream-colored walls and a bright turquoise roof ⁴; a contractor who spent six years on the island told the Virgin Islands Daily News of Danish-style architecture with separate buildings for the master bedroom, the kitchen, the living room and the office ¹⁶.

Its size is reported inconsistently. DPNR permit records reviewed by NBC News give the original house as 8,124 sq ft; in November 2007 Epstein proposed a 16,747 sq ft addition in three wings, and whether the full permit was granted is unclear ¹¹. NBC's reports on the August 2019 FBI search describe a 24,000 sq ft residence with two pools and a spa, which fits the sum of the two figures; NBC also printed a total of 46,697 sq ft that does not ^18,11.

In 2005 a pool contractor flown in from West Palm Beach installed an infinity pool off the master bedroom ¹⁶, the 2022 listing counted two pools ³, and in December 2009 Epstein applied for a 2,400 sq ft sun deck, a 10,400 sq ft pool pavilion, a 1,320 sq ft ATV garage and a tennis court ¹¹.

The guest accommodation appears in the listing as four guest villas, alongside a gym, a cinema in Fortune's summary and a lagoon with flamingos ^2,27. The government images released in December 2025 show bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens and a library or office with a large desk and a blackboard, all photographed in 2020 and without people ^13,28.

As for the current state, a Telegraph comparison of satellite imagery from 2019 to 2025 found the mansion, pools, guest villas and helipad unchanged, with one small structure added on the beach and another toward the dock ⁹. Storm damage to the main house itself is not documented in the sources used here; the one loss reported in connection with the 2017 storms is the dome of the striped building, though accounts of the cause differ ^4,1.

Helipad, dock, water and power: how the island was supplied

Little St. James has no runway. Epstein's jets landed at Cyril E. King Airport on St. Thomas, and passengers were flown from there by helicopter to the island's helipad ^21,22,29. A Bell 430 helicopter was bought for his aviation company Hyperion Air for US$1.58 million in March 2012 ³⁰, and CBS News reported in 2025 that two helicopters were operated from the island ¹⁹.

Power first came from generators that cost tens of thousands of dollars a month in fuel; around 2005 Epstein paid the Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority to lay a hybrid electric and fiber-optic submarine cable from Cabrita Point on the East End of St. Thomas, and fresh water comes from the island's own reverse-osmosis plant ¹⁶.

A 70-foot transport barge linked to Epstein, moored at Crown Bay Marina on St. Thomas, was blamed for heavy damage there when Hurricane Irma hit on 6 September 2017; the marina sued for US$160,473 in repairs plus more than US$70,000 in temporary repairs, alleging the barge was inadequately secured ³¹. Irma crossed the northern Virgin Islands as a Category 5 storm, and Maria followed on 20 September 2017 ^32,33.

On the ground, Fox News documented a covered boat dock and stone pathways in 2019 ²⁰, and the FBI search party of 12 August 2019 arrived by boat and helicopter and fanned out in golf carts ^34,18. The one documented building project since the sale is modest: in December 2025 the new owner applied for a CZM major permit to rebuild an existing metal-framed warehouse as an 8,800 sq ft concrete warehouse with a cistern under its floor, and on 5 February 2026 the CZM director called the application incomplete because no environmental assessment had been submitted ^10,35. In May 2026 a spokesperson for the property said there was 'no sign of that resort or any momentum towards it' ⁴⁴.

Great St. James: the second island, the permits and the stop-work order

Great St. James, the larger neighbor reported at about 160 to 165 acres ^2,26, was bought in January 2016 through the entity Great St. Jim LLC for US$22.5 million ^6,36. The deeds and the July 2016 consent agreement are not available online; the price and the penalty figures that follow rest on the CZM file as reported by the Daily News and on media consensus ^6,26. The permit dispute that followed also appears in the timeline; here it is told by building.

Construction began before permits. After complaints in April 2016 a DPNR inspector found newly cut roads, a helipad at the north end and an excavation believed to be for a building site, all without Coastal Zone Management permits. DPNR issued a cease-and-desist and reached a settlement citing US$280,000 in fines, reduced to US$70,000 with no admission of wrongdoing; the US$70,000 was paid on 5 August 2016 ^6,37.

The settlement did not hold. After an inspection in late October 2016 DPNR issued a new cease-and-desist and demanded removal of the helipad; a driveway and a beach-bar cabana had not been removed by late November, and on 15 December 2016 Epstein was ordered to pay the remaining US$210,000 ^6,38. In June 2017 a supplemental agreement replaced that payment with a US$160,000 environmental project ⁶. The beach itself was never private: under the Open Shorelines Act the shore strip stays open to the public, which the 2017 application acknowledged, and in 2016 boaters reported 'no trespassing' signs on the Great St. James beach ^43,26,38.

On 10 January 2017 Epstein signed an application for a CZM major permit as president of Poplar, Inc., sole member of Great St. Jim LLC. The site plans show a complex linked by a private road: a barge dock, two homes, cottages, an amphitheater, a solar array, storage, security and workshop buildings and an 'underwater office & pool' ^26,7.

Coastal Zone Management issued a stop-work order on 21 December 2018 because the permitted plans were not followed. In May 2019 the DPNR commissioner said work had continued regardless, including additional roadways, two jetties and fill placed into submerged lands, and that at US$10,000 per day Epstein could theoretically face more than US$1 million in fines ^7,26. In July 2019 DPNR confirmed the order remained in effect ⁸. A joint EPA and DPNR inspection in October 2019 found evidence of development without a permit; the EPA's inspector general found no evidence of corruption at DPNR ³⁹.

Text messages from 2019, published by CNN in February 2026, show Governor Albert Bryan Jr. telling Epstein he had asked the territory's top environmental official to pause enforcement of the stop-work order; he denies wrongdoing and said in March 2026 that he supports an inquiry ^40,41.

At Epstein's death in August 2019 no compound had been completed; roads, a helipad, jetties, a driveway and a beach-bar cabana had been built ^17,3,2. The USVI Attorney General's office found that historical structures of enslaved workers had been razed for the development, and the December 2022 settlement includes US$450,000 for environmental remediation there ^42,22. Which of these works still exist is not documented ⁹. In April 2026 the DPNR Commissioner told a senator's inquiry that any of Epstein's permit applications still pending at the 2023 sale lapsed automatically and that no transfer to the buyer had been requested; the new owner's only application on file remains the Little St. James warehouse ^45,10.