Hart Island, New York

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Hart Island
Geography
Location Long Island Sound
Area 131.22 acres (0.5310 km²)


Administration
Flag of ? ?


Hart Island, sometimes referred to as Hart's Island, is a small island in New York City at the western end of Long Island Sound. It is approximately a mile long and one quarter of a mile wide, and located to the northeast of City Island in the Pelham Islands group. The island is the easternmost part of the borough of the Bronx.

Contents

[edit] History

In the middle of the 19th century, the island was called Lesser Minneford Island. The island was part of the 9,166-acre (37.09 km²) property purchased by Thomas Pell from the local Native Americans in 1654.[1] In 1868 New York City purchased the island from the Hunter family of the Bronx for $75,000.[2] It is believed that British cartographers named it "Heart Island" in 1775, due to its organ-like shape, but that the middle letter was dropped shortly thereafter.[3]

Throughout its history, Hart Island has had a workhouse, hospital, prisons, a Civil War interment camp, a reformatory and a 'Nike missile' base. The island's land area is 0.531 km² (0.205 sq mi, or 131.22 acres) and had no permanent population as of the 2000 census. Currently it serves as the city's potter's field and is run by the New York City Department of Correction.

[edit] Prison

At various times, the New York City Department of Correction has used the island for a prison, but it is currently uninhabited.

Hart Island was a prisoner of war camp for four months in 1865. 3,413 captured Confederate soldiers were housed. 235 died. Their remains were relocated to Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn in 1941. [1]

[edit] Cemetery

It is the location of a 101 acre potter's field for New York City, one of the most famous such cemeteries in the United States. In 1869, a 24-year-old woman named Louisa Van Slyke became the first person interred in the island's 45 acre graveyard. [4] More than 750,000 dead are buried there—approximately 2,000 a year—more than half of them infants and stillborn. [5][6] [2] The dead are buried in trenches. Babies are placed in coffins little larger than shoeboxes, and are stacked five coffins high and twenty coffins across. Adults are placed in larger pine boxes priced according to size, and are stacked three coffins high and two coffins across. [5] The potter's field is also used to dispose of amputated body parts, which are placed in boxes labeled "limbs". Ceremonies have not been conducted at the burial site since the 1950s, and no individual markers are set.[7] In the past, burial trenches were re-used after 25-50 years, allowing for sufficient decomposition of the remains. Presently, historic buildings are being torn down to make room for new burials.[8] The American novelist Dawn Powell was buried here in 1970, five years after her death, when her executor refused to reclaim her remains. Academy Award winner Bobby Driscoll was also buried here when he died in 1968 because no one was able to identify his remains when he was found dead in an East village tenement.[2].

Because of the number of weekly interments made at Potter's Field and the expense to the taxpayers, these mass burials are straightforward. Those interred on Hart Island are not necessarily homeless or indigent, as hearsay has it, but people who could either not afford the expenses of private funerals or who were unclaimed by relatives. At least fifty percent of the burials are children under five who are identified and died in hospitals. Many others have families who live abroad and whose relatives search for years. Their search is made more difficult because burial records are presently kept within the prison system. A Freedom of Information Law request for 50,000 burial records was granted to Melinda Hunt on March 13, 2008.[9][10] These records contain all burials from 1985-2007 except adult burials Oct. 15, 1985-April 29, 1988. A second FOIL request for these missing book(s) in addition to records from Sept. 1, 1977 to December 31, 1984 was submitted to the Department of Correction on June 2, 2008 by the law office of David B. Rankin.

The New York City Department of Transportation runs a ferry service with one boat, to the island from the Fordham Street pier on City Island. Prison labor from Rikers Island is used for burial details, paid at 50 cents an hour. Inmates stack the pine coffins in two rows, three high and 25 across, and each plot is marked with a single concrete marker. The first AIDS victim from New York City is buried on Hart Island.[citation needed]--> A tall white peace monument erected by New York City prison inmates for the unnamed dead is at the top of what is known as "Cemetery Hill."

[edit] Poor House

In the late 19th century Hart Island became the location of a Boy's Workhouse which was an extension of the prison and almshouse on Blackwell's Island, now Roosevelt Island. There is a section of old wooden houses and masonry institutional structures dating back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that have fallen into disrepair. These are now being torn down to provide new ground for burials. Military barracks from the Civil War period were used prior to the construction of workhouse and hospital facilities. None of the original Civil War Period buildings are still standing.

In the early Twentieth Century, Hart Island housed about two thousand delinquent boys as well as old male prisoners from Blackwell's Penitentiary. This prison population moved to Riker's Island when the prison on Welfare Island (formerly Blackwell's Island) was torn down in 1936. Remaining on Hart Island is a building constructed in 1885 as a women's insane asylum, the Pavilion, as well as Phoenix House, a drug rehabilitation facility that closed in 1976.

[edit] Missiles

The island has defunct Nike Ajax missile silos nearby that were once part of the United States Army base Fort Slocum from 1955-1961. [4] Some silos are located on Davids Island.

[edit] Tours

Hart Island and the pier on Fordham Street on City Island are restricted areas, with trespassing punishable by a fine of $600 and a year in prison.

The New York City Department Of Corrections had one guided tour of the island in 2000 at local residents' requests. Visitors were allowed to see the outside of the missile silos and Peace Monument nearby and saw the ruined buildings, some dating back to the 1880s.

[edit] Popular culture

  • William Styron's first novel, Lie Down in Darkness, (1951) contains a moving and elegiac description of the island.
  • The movie The Saint of Fort Washington (1993) was shot on Hart Island with actual Correction Officers performing a burial. This is the last time that a feature movie was actually shot on Hart Island. [11]
  • Most of the horror movie Island of the Dead(2000) takes place on Hart Island
  • The finale for the movie Don't Say a Word (2001) is set on Hart Island, but was shot in Canada. Hart Island has no individual grave markers as seen this movie.

[edit] References

  1. ^ A Short Genealogy of Hart Island, accessed November 5, 2006
  2. ^ a b Final Exits: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of How We Die by Michael Largo. HarperCollins Publishers, New York City: 2006. ISBN-13: 978-0-7394-7539-3. pages 407-408.
  3. ^ Santora, Marc. "An Island Of the Dead Fascinates The Living", The New York Times, January 27, 2003. Accessed October 14, 2007. "Mr. Miller said he thought the the spelling was a corruption of the word heart. In his book he writes that British cartographers believed that the island was shaped like the organ when they named the island in 1775. But within two years, it was being spelled on maps as Hart."
  4. ^ a b "A Chance to Be Mourned.", New York Times, November 12, 2006. Retrieved on 2007-08-21. "In 1869, a 24-year-old woman named Louisa Van Slyke became the first person interred in the island's 45 acre graveyard. The island's southern end continued to accommodate the living; people were quarantined there during the 1870 yellow fever epidemic, and at various times Hart has been home to a women's lunatic asylum, a tubercularium, delinquent boys, and during the Cold War, Nike missiles. ... According to the Department of Correction, in 2005 there were 1,419 burials on Hart Island: 826 were of adults, 546 were of infants or stillborn, and 47 were of dismembered body parts." 
  5. ^ a b Hunt, Melinda; Joel Sternfeld. Hart Island. ISBN 3-931141-90-X. 
  6. ^ "Sadness in Our Hearts.", New York Times, May 30, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-08-21. "In the 16 years that I have been helping family members and others locate stillborn babies buried on Hart Island, New York City's potter's field, I have never had anyone complain about not having a birth certificate for a stillborn child. People I help are concerned that burial records from the last 25 years are inaccessible and that going through the prison system to visit a baby's burial site adds additional grief." 
  7. ^ In Essentials, Unity; In Non-Essentials, Liberty; and in All Things Charity: A Historical Account of the Mission of the Diocese of New York of the Protestant Episcopal Church to the Institutions and the Potter's Field on Hart Island, by Wayne Kempton, archivist of the Episcopal Diocese of New York
  8. ^ Island of the Dead (Island Week) - Google Sightseeing
  9. ^ Buckley, Cara, Finding the Names of Island's Forgotten, Metro Section, New York Times, March 24, 2008.
  10. ^ Searching for Names on an Island of Graves - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog
  11. ^ Thomas Antenen, NYC Department of Correction Interview 2002

[edit] Further reading

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

New York City Releases Burial Records 1985-2007[3]

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