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Public Park to Be Built on Hart Island-Potter’s Field on Bronx Coast
By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh
For decades, Hart Island has been a potter’s field closed to the public, where the city of New York has buried its unclaimed dead.
As reported by the NY Times, since the 19th century the off-limits cemetery has been owned and managed by New York’s jail system, with inmates doing the grave digging till 2020. The 131-acre site, located in Long Island Sound off the coast of the Bronx, has close to a million buried bodies, and was instrumental during the COVID-19 pandemic when the overwhelming number of deaths inundated morgue capacities and doubled the usual burial rates.
Since 2021, though, the field’s ownership has been transferred to the city’s parks department. As per the NY Times, now, there are plans to turn the secretive plot into a park. “For decades, Hart Island has been misunderstood and stigmatized,” said Sue Donoghue, the agency’s commissioner. “But today is a new day.” The graves will remain undisturbed, and there are still roughly 1,100 burials conducted there annually by the city. There are no plans to turn it into a playground or add picnic tables. However, the decades old large “PRISON KEEP OFF” sign has already been removed. The waterfront island and the open spaces will now be shared with the public. “It will be passive, scenic open space, not a place where people disembark and go at it, just to have fun,” said Mitchel Loring, a senior project planner with the parks department.
The site will undergo a roughly $70 million overhaul. The city’s Human Resources Administration, which now manages the site’s burial operations and records, has already cleared the area of overgrowth making it more walkable. Also, the Department of Design and Construction has knocked down and cleared away some 15 decrepit old buildings, making more space, a cleaner look and opening it up to the water views. The site may never be a gorgeous cemetery with monuments and manicured lawns, as the very modest unnamed small white posts marking the graves belonging to the poor, indigent and the stillborn will still remain.
Still, the site will be opened sometime later this year to a limited number of persons for “managed visitation”. The city is not yet certain how to turn this spooky island for the lost souls into a public recreation site. For now, there are plans to hold nature classes and guided tours led by urban park rangers as part of the department’s Weekend Adventures series. There are plans for canoeing, hiking, archery and fishing events, designed to both honor the dead and revive the aura of the island, as reported by the Times. An advocacy group has also set up access for smartphones, in an app which provides navigation and augmented reality, and allows visitors to search burial records.
Currently there is only a single city-run ferry used to shuttle in morgue trucks to the site. There are, however, plans for public transportation in the works. Possible options include a 3.5-mile shuttle bus from the 6 train to the island’s existing ferry, or perhaps a new dedicated water route from the Bronx.
“The city has budgeted more than $80 million in tax dollars,” said Melinda Hunt, the founder of the nonprofit Hart Island Project.
