New York’s potter’s field became an unlikely savior during the coronavirus crisis — more than quintupling its usual pace of burials during the height of the pandemic, new stats show.
With funeral homes and morgues overflowing with corpses as the disease ravaged the city, Hart Island took 894 bodies between March 9 and Friday.
Coronavirus has created a grim new reality at the nation’s largest mass grave.
Only 11 miles from Manhattan, Hart Island has been the final resting place for New York’s unclaimed and poor for over a century. The island off the Bronx was thrust into the national spotlight in early April, after the city announced it would be using the public cemetery to inter unclaimed victims of covid-19.
Occupying 131 acres in Long Island Sound, off the Bronx shore, Hart Island is the largest public burial ground in the United States. It has been New York City’s public burial ground for more than 150 years. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, it is being pressed into service as a temporary resting place for deceased New Yorkers whose families could not retain a funeral home.
Some have called it a home for mass graves, but for more than a hundred years, Hart Island has been the city’s public cemetery.
Melinda Hunt, president of the Hart Island Project, a nonprofit which works to increase access to the island said the site is a well-managed public burial ground which has operated for generations.
New York City officials have hired contract laborers to bury the dead in its potter’s field on Hart Island as the city’s daily death rate from the coronavirus epidemic has reached grim new records in each of the last three days.
At least once a week between January and March, J. Crawford woke up around 5:30 A.M. on Rikers Island, the city’s largest jail complex, and changed into work boots and an orange and white jumpsuit. Around six o’clock, he boarded a bus operated by the Department of Correction, which carried incarcerated workers and a few correction officers to a ferry on City Island, in the Bronx.
They died poor and unclaimed and before their lives began. They died but before they died, they left their flesh, their eyes to science. They died lost to themselves or lost to others, loved or barely liked, in secret or on the street or without telling anyone that they were dying.
On an island off New York City, authorities in 2018 found 174 bones unearthed on a site that holds the remains of more than 1 million people. The culprit was shoreline erosion.
Historically, the island — the world’s largest tax-funded cemetery — has operated under the purview of the Department of Corrections (DoC), which pays Rikers Island inmates $1 an hour to handle the area’s many bodies. The bill, which Mayor Bill de Blasio signed into law earlier this month, will transfer control of Hart Island to the New York City Parks Department.
NYC mayor signed a bill that transfers control of the nations largest public burial ground, Hart Island, from the city corrections dept to the parks department
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Mayor Bill de Blasio has signed a bill making Hart Island, the largest public burial ground in the nation, a city park.
NEW YORK - A small island in the Long Island Sound that is home to the nation's largest public burial ground will soon be easier to visit and explore.
NEW YORK CITY — More than one million New Yorkers buried in unmarked graves on an island off the coast of The Bronx are no longer a part of the penal system.
Mayor Bill de Blasio signed legislation Wednesday that overhauls the city’s management of Hart Island, the largest potter’s field in the nation where an estimated million New Yorkers were laid to rest.
When the AIDS epidemic hit in full in the 1980s, the city began sending the death victims to a separate area south on the island. "Parts of the unknown story of the AIDS epidemic are buried on Hart Island. It is totally unacceptable that the island is still there as an open wound. We have to go through a process that honors these people." says Melinda Hunt to Blikk.
Last week, we took Hart Island back. A final resting place is not a jail, and we made that official when we voted to transfer the island so it's no longer under the Department of Corrections.
For the first time, a Queens mom may finally get to visit her infant daughter’s gravesite without feeling shame.
For years, it has been hard for New Yorkers to visit their loved ones buried on Hart Island because it was controlled by the city’s department of corrections. Now, the City Council has voted to transfer it to the parks department, making it more like a cemetery than a prison.
The New York City Council has voted to make Hart Island — the nation’s largest public burial ground — more accessible to families of the dead.
By a vote of 45-2, the council opted on Thursday to transfer control of the potter’s field from the Department of Correction to the parks department.
About 1 million people are buried on the desolate island, many anonymously and unclaimed. Graves are dug by prisoners of nearby Rikers Island jail, and the island off the Bronx is reachable only by an occasional ferry.
In recent years, erosion has washed remains into Long Island Sound.
Families who have located their loved ones have difficulties visiting graves under security imposed by prison authorities.
The city is considering public transportation stops that would expand access.
“The way to normalize this is to have people who do have a choice choosing this green burial,” Hunt said. Our taxes pay for City Cemetery, and we can reframe the way we think about public burials, she said. “You’ve already paid for your burial—make it the cemetery you want it to be.”
The New York City Council Committee on Parks and Recreation and the Committee on Transportation will hold a hearing on Thursday, May 30 2019 at 10:00 A.M. in the Committee Room, New York, NY regarding four bills pertaining to the City’s Burial Process.
To view the topics in detail, please CLICK HERE.
Oversight - Hart Island and the City's Public Burial Process.
Int 906 - In relation to a transfer of jurisdiction over Hart Island from the department of corrections to the department of parks and recreation.
Int 909 - In relation to a Hart Island transportation plan.
Int - In relation to the establishment of an office to provide support to those in need of burial assistance.
Int - In relation to the creation of a task force on public burial and related issues.
Please be advised that if you plan to participate, it would be greatly appreciated if you could bring thirty (30) copies double-sided of your written testimony to the hearing or submit your written testimony to: EBalkan@council.nyc.gov
We would appreciate receiving a response from you as to whether or not you will be able to attend or submit written testimony. Please let us know if you would like help preparing your testimony: contact@hartisland.net.
Access Provided: For questions about accessibility or to request additional accommodations please contactNicole Benjamin (NBenjamin@council.nyc.gov or 212-482-5176) at least 72 hours before the hearing.
For all other questions about the hearing, please contact Emily Balkan (EBalkan@council.nyc.gov or 212-482-5439).
On the last day of In the Presence of Absence, we will mark its passing with a series of readings on the themes of grief and loss. Writers and artists Raha Behnam, Erica Cardwell, TR Ericsson, Michelle García, Diane Mehta, and Jillian Steinhauer will share original work. The event will also celebrate the launch of the exhibition’s accompanying publication, which contains essays by García, Steinhauer, and Jessica Lynne. As at a wake or a shiva call, there will be refreshments and a chance to mingle and reflect.
Over the last few years, Melinda and the Hart Island Project have brought the plight of Hart Island’s deteriorating condition to the public and opened the conversation to make the Island a public park.
While grief is a personal feeling, memorials are a key way in which our society collectively mourns. This panel discussion will consider the different forms that such public tributes can take and the politics of who gets to be commemorated. What new memorials are being created to fill out the landscape of a death-denying country dotted with Confederate statues? What future ones do we need? The four panelists, Anthony Goicolea, Melinda Hunt, Karla Rothstein, and Elizabeth Velazquez, have all experimented with what a memorial can be, bringing their creative energies to bear on an old practice. They will speak about their work and then engage in a conversation about who, what, and how we collectively remember. Moderated by Jillian Steinhauer.
The Hart Island Project will have an information table at the Interfaith Peace & Health Breakfast. Please stop by and say hello.
More information: INTERFAITHINYOURCITY@GMAIL.COM | 718-790-9120 / 917-374-7917
EFA Project Space is pleased to present In the Presence of Absence, an exhibition about the nature of grief. The show explores the creative possibilities of mourning, looking at how people transmute suffering over the loss of loved ones into ways to live.
Participating Artists: Edgar Heap of Birds, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, M. Carmen Lane, Eeigh Eleanor Davis, Melinda Hunt, Nene Humphrey, Inbal Abergil, Emily Carris, Valery Jung Estabrook.
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Ray Charnick suffered from addiction for his entire adult life. In 1997, he died of AIDS related illnesses. His brother chose to have him interred on Hart Island. This film directed by Ray's son, Jason, explores dad's life and death.
The Hart Island Project would love to catch up with you and talk about our mission. Please stop by our table from 11 AM - 12:30 PM.
The Hart Island Project launched Traveling Cloud Museum 2.0 on November 1, 2018. Please show your support for our innovation storytelling platform by donating on-line on Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday
St. Brendan Catholic Church is one block from the D train. For more information call 718-547-6655.
Neil Harris Jr., the Long Island man who lived the last years of his life in Riverside Park, will have a new memorial service on Nov. 4 after a local journalist discovered his real name and told his family.
Harris was known to many locals as Stephen. He spent his days on benches in the park, including one at 75th Street. When he died last year, the city could not identify him, and he was buried on Hart Island, the city potter’s field. Locals held a memorial service for the man and dedicated a bench in Riverside Park to him.
Loneliness in a Beautiful Place: Drone video tour of AIDS burials on Hart Island and introduction to the Traveling Cloud Museum's new interactive map
Hart Island is the burial site of anyone who dies in New York City whose body is not collected by a licensed funeral director. The City does not cremate. On June 18, 1983, the New York State Funeral Directors Association urged its members not to embalm AIDS fatalities. It then became difficult to find a funeral director to handle the bodies of AIDS victims.
At least seventeen AIDS victims who died before 1985 were buried in individual graves at a remote location at the southern-most tip of the Hart Island. On April 29, 2018, a drone flying over the southern tip of Hart Island captured the locations of burial markers.
The Hart Island Project AIDS Initiative is an attempt to identify AIDS victims buried on Hart Island and preserve their stories. According to a recent story in The New York Times: “Trying to pin down the precise number of those with AIDS buried on Hart Island is difficult. A longstanding stigma about the island and criticism that the burial practices are crude and outdated have made city officials reluctant to provide many details.”
Traveling Cloud Museum is an effort to deconstruct their disappearance by urging people to stop the clocks of anonymity.
Author Stacy Horn will relate the chilling account of the infamous Blackwell’s Island (now Roosevelt Island), when it was managed by the Department of Charities and Correction. The workhouse, prison and lunatic asylum on Hart Island were branches of those on Blackwells. The Department of Correction still controls Hart Island today as the nightmare continues into the 21st Century on Riker's and Hart Island.
$15, $10 MHM Members. Purchase tickets
The Hart Island Project board of directors invites you to meet with us on June 23, 2018 at Grace Church in Brooklyn Heights, NY 11201.
Enter at 254 Hicks Street and walk straight to the doors at the end of the sidewalk. Go through the doors and up the stairs directly to Guild Hall. Please let us know in advance if you require wheelchair access: 914-402-5992.
For more information send us an email. The media is welcome to attend.
Join The Hart Island Project at the Historic Districts Council for a Participant-Driven Preservation Conference: Open to the Public!
Vote to hear us talk about how the Civil War influenced burials in New York City.
Notice how Hart Island is missing from this map of greenspaces in the Bronx? It's time to speak-up. Please join The Hart Island Project for the 24th Annual Bronx Parks Speak Up on Saturday, February 24 from 11am-5pm. The tabling and networking time will begin at 11 am and last until 12 Noon. A free lunch is provided and we will have HIP t-shirts and DVDs for sale.
The Future of NYC Culture and Arts: A conversation with New York City Speaker Candidates.
Moderator: Juan Manuel Benítez, Journalist, Anchor, Reporter, NY1 News.
The Hart Island Project is a community engagement partner. If you have any questions about the forum, please feel free to contact Roberto.Ragone@gmail.com or at 917-923-4765
Due to popular demand, the Historic Districts Council and The Hart Island Project will narrate a second trip to and around Hart Island, the city's Potter's Field. It will begin at Pier 66, West 26th Street and 12th Avenue in Chelsea. We will trace the original route from Bellevue Hospital, past Roosevelt Island, through the Hells Gate, past Riker's Island and on to Hart Island on the eastern edge of the Bronx in the Long Island Sound. This trip not recommended for young children. Please bring your own snacks and sunscreen.
The Historic Districts Council and The Hart Island Project will narrate a trip to and around Hart Island, the city's Potter's Field. It will begin at Pier 66, West 26th Street and 12th Avenue in Chelsea. We will trace the original route from Bellevue Hospital, past Roosevelt Island, through the Hells Gate, past Riker's Island and on to Hart Island on the eastern edge of the Bronx in the Long Island Sound. This trip not recommended for young children. Please bring your own snacks and sunscreen.
