Hart Island, New York

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Hart
Geography
Hart Island, New York is located in New York City
Hart Island, New York (New York City)
Location Long Island Sound
Coordinates 40°51′13″N 73°46′14″W / 40.853603°N 73.770447°W / 40.853603; -73.770447
Archipelago The Pelham Islands
Area 131.22 acres (0.5310 km2)
Length 1 mi (1.6 km)
Width .25 mi (0.40 km)
Country
United States
State  New York
City New York City
Borough The Bronx

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 February 1869, New York City purchased the island from the Hunter family of the Bronx for $75,000.[2] There are several versions of the origin of the island's name. In the 1996 book The Other Islands of New York City, Stuart Miller states that British cartographers named it "Heart Island" in 1775, due to its organ-like shape, but the middle letter was dropped shortly thereafter.[3] Others sources indicate that hart refers to the Middle English word for "deer." One version of this theory is that the island was given the name when it was used as a game preserve.[4] Another version holds that it was named in reference to deer that migrated from the mainland during periods when ice covered that part of Long Island Sound.[5] A passage in William Styron's novel Lie Down in Darkness [6] describes the island as occupied by a lone deer shot by a hunter with a row boat. Styron provides a vivid description of the public burials following World War II including the handling of remains from re-excavated graves.

Throughout its history, Hart Island has had a workhouse, hospital, prisons, a Civil War internment 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, along with those of Union soldiers buried on Hart Island, were relocated to Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn in 1941.[7]

[edit] Cemetery

Hart Island is the location of a 101-acre (0.41 km2) potter's field for New York City, the largest tax-funded cemetery in the world.[8] Burials on Hart Island began during the American Civil War. Hart Island was sold to New York City in 1869,[2] which began using it as a cemetery later that year when a 24-year-old woman named Louisa Van Slyke was the first person to be buried in the island's 45-acre (180,000 m2) public graveyard.[9] Burials of unknowns were in single plots and identified adults and children were buried in mass graves.[10] In 1913, adults and children under five were buried in separate mass graves. Unknowns are mostly adults. They are frequently disinterred when families are able to locate their relatives through photographs and fingerprints kept on file at the Office of the Medical Examiner. Adults are buried in trenches with three sections of 48 individuals to make disinterment easier. Children, mostly infants, are rarely disinterred and are buried in trenches of 1000.[11]

Hart Island's southern end continued to accommodate the living up until Phoenix House moved in 1976. In 1977, the island was vandalized and many burial records were destroyed by a fire. Remaining records were transferred to the Municipal Archives in Manhattan. People were quarantined there during the 1870 yellow fever epidemic, and at various times Hart has been home to a women's lunatic asylum (The Pavilion, 1885), a tubercularium,[12] delinquent boys,[13] and during the Cold War, Nike missiles.[14]

More than 800,000 dead are buried there—approximately 2,000 a year—one third of them infants and stillborn which is reduced from one half since children's health insurance began to cover all pregnant women in New York State.[15] [16][17][18] In 2005 there were 1,419 burials in the potter's field on Hart Island, including 826 adults, 546 infants and stillborn babies, and 47 burials of dismembered body parts.[9] The dead are buried in trenches. Babies are placed in coffins of various sizes, and are stacked five coffins high and usually twenty coffins across. Adults are placed in larger pine boxes priced according to size, and are stacked three coffins high and two coffins across.[15] Burial records on microfilm at the Municipal Archives in Manhattan indicate that babies and adults were buried together in mass graves up until 1913 when the trenches became separate in order to facilitate the more common disinterment of adults. 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 except for the first child to die of AIDS in New York City who was buried in isolation.[19][20] 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.[21]

Because of the number of weekly interments made at Potter's Field and the expense to the taxpayers, these mass burials are straightforward and conducted by Riker's Island inmates. 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 who are frequently not notified within a two week period. Approximately fifty percent of the burials are children under five who are identified and died in New York City hospitals. The mothers of these children are generally unaware of what it means to sign papers authorizing a "City Burial." These women as well as siblings often go looking many years later. Many others have families who live abroad or out of state and whose relatives search for years. Their search is made more difficult because burial records are presently kept within the prison system.[1] An investigation into the handling of the infant burials was opened in response to a criminal complaint made to the New York State Attorney General's Office on April 1, 2009.[2]

A Freedom of Information Law request for 50,000 burial records was granted to Melinda Hunt on March 13, 2008.[22][23] The 1403 pages provided by the Department of Correction contain lists all burials from 1985-2007. A second FOIL request for records from September 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. New York City has located 502 pages from that period and they will soon be available to the public.[24] A law suit concerning "place of death" information redacted from the Hart Island burial records was filed against New York City on July 11, 2008 by the Law Office of David B. Rankin. It was settled out of court in January 2009. Only private addresses according to the NYC tax code now redacted from publicly available records.

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 pediatric AIDS victim to die in New York City is buried in the only single grave on Hart Island with a concrete marker that reads SP (special child) B1 (Baby 1) 1985.[19] A tall white peace monument erected by New York City prison inmates following World War II is at the top of what was known as "Cemetery Hill" prior to the installation of the now abandoned Nike Missile Base at the north end of Hart Island.

The Jewish playwright, film screenwriter, and director Leo Birinski was buried here in 1951, when he had died alone and in poverty.[25] The American novelist Dawn Powell was buried on Hart Island 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.[26] His daughter, Aaren Keely, submitted a poem "The Letter" in his memory to the Hart Island Project.

[edit] Poor House

Convalescent Hospital on Hart Island, 1877.

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.[citation needed] 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 is 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, battery NY-15 that were part of the United States Army base Fort Slocum from 1956-1961 and operated by the Army's 66th Antiaircraft Artillery Missile Battalion.[9] Some silos are located on Davids Island. The Integrated Fire Control system that tracked the targets and directed missiles was located in Fort Slocum. The last components of the missile system were closed in 1974.[27]

[edit] Access

Hart Island and the pier on Fordham Street on City Island are restricted areas.

The New York City Department of Correction schedules individual visits with family members who can show that a relative is buried on Hart Island. New York City currently offers no provisions for individuals wanting to visit Hart Island without contacting the prison system. Press are not allowed access. Since 1994, Melinda Hunt, director of The Hart Island Project[28], has independently assisted families in obtaining copies of public burial records.

The New York City Department Of Correction offered 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.
  • 1940s character actor Al Hill was sent to prison on Hart Island in the 1920s. He wrote about his experiences there in his memoir, Easy Pickings (1933).
  • 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.[29]
  • Most of the horror movie Island of the Dead(2000) is set on Hart Island but it is not shot on location.
  • 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 in this movie.
  • Potter's Field is an ongoing comic book series written by Mark Waid and published by Boom! Studios about an anonymous investigator who takes it upon himself to discover the identities of those buried on Hart Island.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ A Short Genealogy of Hart Island, accessed November 5, 2006
  2. ^ a b Purchase of Hart's Island, The New York Times, February 27, 1869, page 8
  3. ^ Santora, Marc. "An Island Of the Dead Fascinates The Living", The New York Times, January 27, 2003. Accessed October 14, 2007.
  4. ^ The Islands of Pelham Bay, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation website, accessed November 15, 2009
  5. ^ Hunt, Melinda; and Sternfeld, Joel (1998, p. 19). Hart Island. Scalo Zurich, Berlin, New York. ISBN 3-931141-90-X.
  6. ^ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/styron_w.html
  7. ^ http://www.correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/cw_pows/html/cwpows7.html
  8. ^ http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/investigators&id=5968376
  9. ^ a b c Brady, Emily (November 12, 2006). "A Chance to Be Mourned.". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/nyregion/thecity/12home.html?pagewanted=all. Retrieved 2007-08-21. 
  10. ^ Where the Unknown Dead Rest, The New York Times: Local Miscellany. February 1, 1874.
  11. ^ Hunt, Melinda; Joel Sternfeld. Hart Island. ISBN 3-931141-90-X. http://books.google.com/books?id=epwFAAAACAAJ&dq
  12. ^ Criticises a City Hospital: Grand Jury Says Hart's Island Tuberculosis Ward is Unsuitable, New York Times, October 10, 1917.
  13. ^ Likes Life in Workhouse: Inmates Writes of "Good Eats, No Work, and Bum Arguments." The New York Times, October 13, 1915.
  14. ^ Nike Base on the Way to Hart Island, The New York Times, February 14, 1955.
  15. ^ a b Hunt, Melinda; Joel Sternfeld. Hart Island. ISBN 3-931141-90-X. http://books.google.com/books?id=epwFAAAACAAJ&dq. 
  16. ^ Thomas Antenen, NYC Department of Correction Interview 2002
  17. ^ "Sadness in Our Hearts.". New York Times. May 30, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/opinion/l30stillborn.html?pagewanted=print. Retrieved 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." 
  18. ^ Final Exits: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of How We Die by Michael Largo. HarperCollins Publishers, New York City: 2006, ISBN 0060817410, pages 407-408.
  19. ^ a b Hunt, Melinda;& Sternfeld, Joel (1998, p. 83). Hart Island. Scalo Zurich, Berlin, New York. ISBN 3-931141-90-X.
  20. ^ 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
  21. ^ Island of the Dead (Island Week) - Google Sightseeing
  22. ^ Buckley, Cara, Finding the Names of Island's Forgotten, Metro Section, New York Times, March 24, 2008.
  23. ^ Searching for Names on an Island of Graves - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog
  24. ^ http://www.hartisland.net/wwwebs/
  25. ^ Municipal Archives of The New York City.
  26. ^ "Hart Island", The Morning News
  27. ^ Vanderbilt, Tom. "CITY LORE; When Nike Meant More Than 'Just Do It'", The New York Times, March 5, 2000. Accessed August 25, 2008.
  28. ^ http://www.hartisland.org/ Hart Island Project web site
  29. ^ Thomas Antenen, NYC Department of Correction Interview 2002

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links

Coordinates: 40°51′13″N 73°46′14″W / 40.853603°N 73.770447°W / 40.853603; -73.770447

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