Hart Island, New York

Infobox Islands
name = Hart


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Location map|USA New York City|lat=40.853603|long=-73.770447
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location = Long Island Sound
coordinates = coord|40.853603|N|73.770447|W|display=inline
archipelago = The Pelham Islands
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area = convert|131.22|acre|km2|abbr=on
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width = convert|.25|mi|km|abbr=on
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country = United States
country admin divisions title = State
country admin divisions = flag|New York
country admin divisions title 1 = City
country admin divisions 1 = New York City
country admin divisions title 2 = Borough
country admin divisions 2 = The Bronx
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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.

History

In the middle of the 19th century, the island was called Lesser Minneford Island. The island was part of the convert|9166|acre|km2|sing=on property purchased by Thomas Pell from the local Native Americans in 1654. [ [http://www.newyorkfamilyhistory.org/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=64 A Short Genealogy of Hart Island] , accessed November 5, 2006] In February 1869, New York City purchased the island from the Hunter family of the Bronx for $75,000. [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A04EEDF1E3AEF34BC4F51DFB4668382679FDE] 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.Santora, Marc. [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9402EFDF1239F934A15752C0A9659C8B63 "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 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."]

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.

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. [http://www.correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/cw_pows/html/cwpows7.html]

Cemetery

It is the location of a 101 acre potter's field for New York City, the largest tax funded cemetery in the world. [http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/investigators&id=5968376] Burials on Hart Island began during the American Civil War. Hart Island was sold to New York City in 1869 [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A04EEDF1E3AEF34BC4F51DFB4668382679FDE] . In 1869, a 24-year-old woman named Louisa Van Slyke became the first person interred in the island's 45 acre graveyard.cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title= A Chance to Be Mourned. |url=http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/nyregion/thecity/12home.html?pagewanted=all |quote=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.|publisher=New York Times |date=November 12, 2006 |accessdate=2007-08-21 ] More than 750,000 dead are buried there—approximately 2,000 a year—more than half of them infants and stillborn. [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title= Sadness in Our Hearts. |url=http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/opinion/l30stillborn.html?pagewanted=print |quote=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. |publisher=New York Times |date=May 30, 2007 |accessdate=2007-08-21 ] "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.] 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.cite book |last=Hunt |first=Melinda |authorlink= |coauthors=Joel Sternfeld |title=Hart Island |year= |publisher= |quote= | url=http://books.google.com/books?id=epwFAAAACAAJ&dq |isbn=3-931141-90-X ] 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. [Hunt, Melinda;& Sternfeld, Joel (1998, p. 83). Hart Island. Scalo Zurich, Berlin, New York. ISBN 3-931141-90-X.] [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] 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. [ [http://googlesightseeing.com/2006/08/31/island-of-the-dead/ Island of the Dead (Island Week) - Google Sightseeing ] ] 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. 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.

A Freedom of Information Law request for 50,000 burial records was granted to Melinda Hunt on March 13, 2008. [Buckley, Cara, Finding the Names of Island's Forgotten, Metro Section, New York Times, March 24, 2008.] [ [http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/searching-for-names-on-an-island-of-graves/?ex=1196744400&en=0b83ac86d20e7890&ei=5070 Searching for Names on an Island of Graves - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog ] ] The 1302 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. 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.

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. [Hunt, Melinda;& Sternfeld, Joel (1998, p. 83). Hart Island. Scalo Zurich, Berlin, New York. ISBN 3-931141-90-X. ] --> 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.Municipal Archives of The New York City.] 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. [http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/new_york_new_york/hart_island.php] .

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.Fact|date=August 2008 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.

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. 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. [Vanderbilt, Tom. [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9405E1DC1638F936A35750C0A9669C8B63 "CITY LORE; When Nike Meant More Than 'Just Do It'"] , "The New York Times", March 5, 2000. Accessed August 25, 2008.]

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 [http://www.hartisland.org/ Hart Island Project web site] , 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.

Popular culture

*William Styron's first novel, "Lie Down in Darkness," (1951) contains a moving and elegiac description of the island.
*The movie " [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108026 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. [Thomas Antenen, NYC Department of Correction Interview 2002]
*Most of the horror movie " [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0157836 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.

References

Further reading

*Hart Island; Melinda Hunt and Joel Sternfeld; ISBN 3-931141-90-X
* [http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DTTable?_bm=y&-show_geoid=Y&-tree_id=4001&-_showChild=Y&-context=dt&-errMsg=&-all_geo_types=N&-mt_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U_P001&-redoLog=false&-transpose=N&-search_map_config=|b=50|l=en|t=4001|zf=0.0|ms=sel_00dec|dw=0.05330623177477046|dh=0.030289650719350046|dt=gov.census.aff.domain.map.EnglishMapExtent|if=gif|cx=-73.79045224939611|cy=40.84675414435856|zl=3|pz=3|bo=318:317:316:314:313:323:319|bl=362:393:358:357:356:355:354|ft=350:349:335:389:388:332:331|fl=381:403:204:380:369:379:368|g=01000US&-PANEL_ID=p_dt_geo_map&-_lang=en&-geo_id=100$10000US360050516009000&-geo_id=100$10000US360050516009001&-geo_id=100$10000US360050516009002&-geo_id=100$10000US360050516009003&-geo_id=100$10000US360050516009004&-geo_id=100$10000US360050516009005&-geo_id=100$10000US360050516009006&-geo_id=100$10000US360050516009007&-geo_id=100$10000US360050516009008&-geo_id=100$10000US360050516009009&-geo_id=100$10000US360050516009010&-geo_id=100$10000US360050516009011&-geo_id=100$10000US360050516009012&-geo_id=100$10000US360050516009013&-geo_id=100$10000US360050516009014&-geo_id=100$10000US360050516009015&-CONTEXT=dt&-format=&-search_results=01000US&-ds_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U Hart Island: Blocks 9000 thru 9015, Block Group 9, Census Tract 516, Bronx County, New York] United States Census Bureau
* [http://kingstonlounge.blogspot.com/2008/08/hart-island.html Photoessay on Hart Island from August, 2008]

ee also

*Geography and environment of New York City
*The Pelham Islands
*"Don't Say a Word", movie

External links

New York City Releases Burial Records 1985-2007 [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/nyregion/24hart.html?_r=2&st=cse&sq=melinda+hunt&scp=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin]
*http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/media?id=5968674
* [http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1344621530&channel=1243530138 Hart Island: An American Cemetery]
* [http://googlesightseeing.com/2006/08/31/island-of-the-dead/ Hart Island] at "Google Sightseeing"
* [http://www.lindenwald.com/album/hart/ Photo tour]
* [http://www.hartisland.org The Hart Island Project] at hartisland.org
* [http://www.correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/nycdoc/html/hart.html Hart Island] website by the New York Correction History Society
* [http://www.correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/hart/images/hartbook1967g.pdf "A Historical Resumé of Potter's Field, 1869-1967"] - a 16-page flyer published by the NYC Department of Correction in 1967. (Excerpts in HTML [http://www.correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/hart/html/hartbook2.html here] ).
* [http://anglicanhistory.org/academic/kempton2006.pdf "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
* [http://alpha.fdu.edu/~bender/NY15.html The Fort Slocum Nike Installation]
* [http://www.correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/hart/nike/hartnike.htm Brief History of Hart Island Nike Missile Site] by the New York Correction History Society