News

Episode One - The Unmarked Graveyard: Neil Harris

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A few years ago, a young man who called himself Stephen became a fixture in Manhattan’s Riverside Park. Locals started noticing him sitting on the same park bench day after day. He said little and asked for nothing. When Stephen was found dead in 2017, the police couldn’t identify him.

Like other New Yorkers whose bodies can’t be identified, he was buried in a mass grave on Hart Island, America’s largest public cemetery. For many, that would be the end of the story. But one day, a woman who knew Stephen from the park stumbled on his true identity. This is the story of where he came from, and the people who went to great lengths to try to track him down. 

Read more… Episode One - The Unmarked Graveyard: Neil Harris

An artist’s Brief But Spectacular take on New York City’s family tomb

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New York City's Hart Island is the final resting place for more than a million unclaimed bodies. In 2018, artist Melinda Hunt launched the Hart Island Project, which has mapped the entire island and published the stories of more than 68,000 people buried there. Hunt shares her Brief But Spectacular take on New York City's family tomb.

Read more… An artist’s Brief But Spectacular take on New York City’s family tomb
PBS News Hour

Hart Island advocate seeks to honor father's legacy

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Holding the last letter her father wrote her before his death in 1993, Elsie Soto said his words continue to inspire her.  “He knew that he just was not going to be here for this and this was what he was leaving me,” said Soto.

Read more… Hart Island advocate seeks to honor father's legacy

Plans to revitalize Hart Island in effort to welcome visitors in the works

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The city has plans to give Potters Field, located on Hart Island and known for being a burial ground for the city’s unclaimed New Yorkers, a makeover to make it more welcoming to New Yorkers. 

Director Melinda Hunt, of The Hart Island Project, says that the plan will focus on changing the negative imagery associated with the city’s free cemetery. 
 
Hunt says the city’s Parks Department will begin providing guided public tours of the island this year, which she says is a step in the right direction to removing that negative stigma, including the removal of many of the island’s crumbling structures.  

Read more… Plans to revitalize Hart Island in effort to welcome visitors in the works

One of New York's most infamous graveyard's will be converted into a park

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Founding Director of the Hart Island Project Melinda Hunt speaks to Newsline with Brigitte Quinn about the opening of Hart Island.

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New York's long-forbidden graveyard island to be converted to a park

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New York City's Hart Island may be marked by crumbling buildings and over a million graves — but to Melinda Hunt, it's a place of beauty.

"From the very first day that I went there, I felt that it was really misunderstood, that it wasn't really a dark place," she told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. "It was a very beautiful place. So I became very attached to the landscape."

The island, which has been closed to the public, will be free to visit starting some time this year, according to the city. Public consultations will be held over the next year to develop plans for converting it into a park.

Read more… New York's long-forbidden graveyard island to be converted to a park
David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

A Potter's Field as a Public Park

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The morgue trucks, loaded with plain, unmarked pine boxes, still arrive regularly by ferry to Hart Island, a potter’s field where the city has long buried its unclaimed dead.

The island was once a penal colony, and it has been run since the 19th century by New York’s jail system, which used inmate gravediggers and kept it off limits until 2021, when the city transferred the island over to its parks department.

Now, in a remarkable break with the decades-old policy of keeping Hart Island burials secretive and its graves unseen, the department is opening New York’s most forbidden place for public access.

Read more… A Potter's Field as a Public Park
James Estrin/The New York Times

City approves temporary placement for Hart Island memorial touchstone

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After nearly seven months of meetings and marches, the Hart Island Touchstone Coalition will be able to place their bereavement stone on the island. 

Read more… City approves temporary placement for Hart Island memorial touchstone
Courtesy Peace Abbey Foundation

Local advocates pushing for memorial touchstone on Hart Island run into roadblocks

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Elsie Soto’s father died when she was 9 years old, and it took her more than over 20 years to finally find his grave. Now she’s hoping to honor all those in unmarked graves by placing a bereavement stone where her dad is buried, at one of New York City’s most mysterious and painful landmarks.

Read more… Local advocates pushing for memorial touchstone on Hart Island run into roadblocks

Hart Island, the nation’s largest public cemetery, was created for the destitute but now serves a surprising range of people

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NEW YORK — Valerie Griffith’s final journey began on a battered ferry, a floating hearse bound for a most unusual island.

Nobody lives on Hart Island, a scruffy one-mile slice of land in Long Island Sound that New York’s tabloids call “Forgotten Island,” “Haunted Island” and “Isle of Tears.”

For 150 years, it’s been known as the place where the city buries its penniless — not art collectors like Griffith

Read more… Hart Island, the nation’s largest public cemetery, was created for the destitute but now serves a surprising range of people
The New School Photographic Collection

Inside the push to open up Hart Island, NYC's COVID cemetery

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Two years since burials of COVID victims began, an effort is underway to transform the island into an open public cemetery. So far, it has remained largely closed off to the public, and difficult to visit even for bereaved families.

Read more… Inside the push to open up Hart Island, NYC's COVID cemetery
©2022 Melinda Hunt/The Hart Island Project

Hart Island Burials Taken Over By Tree Landscapers, Uprooting Families’ Hopes for Transformation

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The city has tapped a landscaping company with no experience running cemeteries or public spaces to help transform Hart Island, the long-neglected gravesite of thousands killed by COVID, into a refuge for families and other visitors.

The management contract has both the leaders of some of New York’s largest graveyards and families of those interred on Hart Island concerned over the fate of the City Council’s $85 million vision to turn the potter’s field into the nation’s largest municipal cemetery.

Meanwhile, the city Parks Department plans to keep a former Rikers Island captain who supervised inmates carrying out emergency burials of pandemic victims in charge of interments. 

Read more… Hart Island Burials Taken Over By Tree Landscapers, Uprooting Families’ Hopes for Transformation

On Hart Island: Past, Present & Future

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Interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and founding director of The Hart Island Project - Melinda Hunt explored the historical significance of one of the most mysterious and beautiful places in New York City, Hart Island. During her interactive presentation, Melinda shared historical documents, videos, and testimonies to engage us with the municipal burial place's rich history - intrinsically connected in one way or another with all New Yorkers. This event was recorded on November 18, 2021.

Read more… On Hart Island: Past, Present & Future
NYC Department of Records and Information

Family Finds Missing Loved One Buried On Hart Island

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After decades of searching, relatives of missing loved ones finally find closure on Hart Island. The city parks department has eased visitation restrictions. On Saturday, Valerie Smith's family was able to commemorate their visit to her gravesite with a cell phone video on location.

Read more… Family Finds Missing Loved One Buried On Hart Island
Melinda Hunt/The Hart Island Project

The Biggest Public Graveyard in the U.S. Is Becoming Park

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New York City wants Hart Island, the burial grounds for victims of Covid-19 and AIDS, to be a more accessible and inviting place.

It's been the city’s dominant public graveyard since the 19th century. People were buried there during other epidemics including AIDS and the Great Influenza outbreak of 1918. For most of that time, Hart Island has been run much like a jail by the Department of Correction. Save for scheduled and highly-regulated visits, it's been inaccessible to the public. Most labor on the island was done by Rikers’ Island inmates paid a fraction of minimum wage.

But times are changing. This month the Parks Department took over the island, two years after the city council granted it control. Making it a more accessible and inviting space will be a challenge given the island’s deteriorating  buildings, ongoing burials and the need to establish a regular ferry service to the island. 

Read more… The Biggest Public Graveyard in the U.S. Is Becoming Park
Brody Ford/Bloomberg City Lab

Relatives Of Those Buried On Hart Island Say Access Remains Extremely Challenging

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NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – A massive public graveyard is undergoing a transformation. New city management has taken over Hart Island in the Bronx to make it more welcoming to visitors. Advocates say conditions at the cemetery have improved, but there’s still a long way to go.

As CBS2’s Natalie Duddridge reports, drone video shows an aerial view of Hart Island, where more than a million New Yorkers are buried, including those whose families couldn’t afford funerals, or next of kin couldn’t be reached.

“Such a stigma of being buried there,” said Sean Rickard, who has a family member buried on Hart Island. 

Rickard was part of the first group of people to visit Hart Island since the Parks Department assumed jurisdiction last weekend, ending 152 years of control by the city Department of Correction. Until last year, Rikers prisoners buried the bodies on Hart Island, which meant the grounds were highly restricted.

“What we want to do is have it more resemble the experience of visiting any cemetery,” said Melinda Hunt of the Hart Island Project.

Read more… Relatives Of Those Buried On Hart Island Say Access Remains Extremely Challenging
Alon Sicherman & Sean Vegezzi/The Hart Island Project

Memorializing AIDS Epidemic Dead at New York’s Hart Island

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Hart Island is home to a burial ground for people who were interred in obscurity in New York City. The Hart Island Project, founded in 1994, aims to recover the stories of people buried there and recently launched its “AIDS Initiative,” which aims to recover the names and stories of those who died in the AIDS epidemic and were buried on the island. 

Read more… Memorializing AIDS Epidemic Dead at New York’s Hart Island
National Communication Association

Hart Island’s Last Stand

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On June 5, the Department of Buildings, citing public safety, issued an emergency order for the “immediate demolition” of 18 institutional, residential and service buildings constructed on Hart Island between the late 1800s and the mid 1900s.

Read more… Hart Island’s Last Stand
Melinda Hunt Courtesy of The Hart Island Project

NYC Temporary Morgue Lingers, a Reminder of Pandemic's Pain

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As the medical examiner’s office prepares to close the temporary facility, the agency has stopped taking newly deceased people there, and investigators are working to contact relatives and determine final arrangements for the roughly 200 whose remains are left, spokesman Mark Desire said via email last week.

Read more… NYC Temporary Morgue Lingers, a Reminder of Pandemic's Pain
New York Times

Hundreds of bodies of covid-19 victims are still in New York’s refrigerated trucks more than a year into the pandemic

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In a report to a city council health committee last week, officials with the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner acknowledged that the remains of about 750 covid-19 victims are still being stored inside the trucks. Officials said during a Wednesday committee meeting that they will try to lower the number soon.

Dina Maniotis, executive deputy commissioner with the medical examiner’s office, said most of the bodies could end up on Hart Island, off the Bronx, where the has city buried its poor and unclaimed for more than a century. 

“We will continue to work with families,” Maniotis told the health committee, according to the City news site. “As soon as the family tells us they would like their loved one transferred to Hart Island, we do that very quickly.”

Read more… Hundreds of bodies of covid-19 victims are still in New York’s refrigerated trucks more than a year into the pandemic
Ted Shaffrey/AP

Events

Stories from Hart Island

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Go behind the latest season of Radio Diaries' new series, "The Unmarked Graveyard," which untangles mysteries of people buried in America's largest public cemetery.

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Stories from Hart Island
Radio Diaries

Past events

The Hart Island Project Annual Public Meeting

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Meet with The Hart Island Project Board of Directors at our annual public meeting June 17, 2023 from 2:00-3:30 PM - Zoom Meeting ID: 884 0697 2026

Read more…
The Hart Island Project Annual Public Meeting
Traveling Cloud Museum 2022 Mobile First Updates

Global Pandemics Touchstone Walk to Remember

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Beginning at 1 PM on May 28, the NYC Walk to Remember will proceed through Central Park and continue to West 110 Street and The Cathedral of St. John the Divine. This 3 mile solemn walk will be in remembrance of New Yorkers who succumbed to COVID-19 and HIV AIDS, and those who knew and cared for them.

The 3 mile Walk to Remember will conclude with a special blessing of the Touchstone at the Cathedral. A service of music and prayer will follow, beginning at 4pm. The stone will remain on view at the Cathedral until it departs early Tuesday morning for Hart Island in the Bronx.

Global Pandemics Touchstone Walk to Remember
Stonewalk on City Island October 2022

Bronx Parks Speak-up

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The Hart Island Project will have a table at Bronx Parks Speak-Up. Join us for our first in person event at Lehman College's Faculty Dining Room in the MUSIC BUILDING AT 250 BEDFORD PARK BLVD. Bronx, NY and learn about our new navigation tools and interpretive guide.

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Global Pandemic Touchstone Walk on City Island

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On Sunday, October 16th at 2:00 pm EDT, the Hart Island Touchstone Coalition (HITC) will stage the first in a proposed series of bereavement walks to honor the memory of those who have succumbed to the scourge of pandemic illnesses.

The HITC community will pull a hand-drawn carriage containing a granite Global Pandemics Touchstone donated to the Coalition by the nonprofit Peace Abbey Foundation on a course from Pelham Cemetery on King Avenue at City Island to the entrance of the Ferry Dock overlooking Hart Island Cemetery. The quarter-mile bereavement walk with the Touchstone, will bring together families and friends who have loved ones buried on Hart Island and who are seeking to have the Touchstone placed there in their loved one's honor. 

Read more…
Global Pandemic Touchstone Walk on City Island

HDC Six to Celebrate - Bronx Conversation with Past Awardees

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The Historic Districts Council (HDC) invites you to an in-person event to discuss how to assist Bronx neighborhoods advance their preservation goal. If you are interested in learning about the preservation-related priorities of different communities, come hear from previous participants about their experiences with this program, their achievements, and their current priorities in terms of preserving the historic treasures of their neighborhood. The conversation will be led and moderated by Angel Hernandez and Samuel Brooks, co-chairs of HDC’s Bronx Borough Landmarks Committee. Thursday, October 13, 2022 – 7:00PM

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HDC Six to Celebrate - Bronx Conversation with Past Awardees
Hart Island Historic Guide

The Hart Island Project Annual Meeting

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Please join us for a progress report on our mission to open access to Hart Island and assist families and friends of the buried.

We're converting our website to mobile first and adding new navigation and location based storytelling tools.

We need your ideas for how to preserve Hart Island as a National Historic Site and National Monument

Join Here on Zoom

Read more…

Bronx Parks Speak-up

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Please join The Hart Island Project to learn about our work to restore Hart Island as America's largest natural burial ground and its essential place in New York City's Green Infastructure

REGISTER HERE

Read more…
Bronx Parks Speak-up

On Hart Island: Past, Present and Future - On Zoom & In Person

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The Roosevelt Island Library and the Roosevelt Island Historical Society are proud to host Melinda Hunt and her presentation on Hart Island. Melinda Hunt is President and founding director of The Hart Island Project in New York City. Her work led to ending 150 years of penal control on Hart Island. She is a NYFA/NYSCA Fellow in electronic art. She is a visual artist who works in a variety of fields and settings.

REGISTER

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On Hart Island: Past, Present and Future - On Zoom & In Person
Alon Sicherman & Sean Vegezzi/The Hart Island Project

HIV/Aids The epidemic isn’t over!

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The exhibition “HIV/Aids, the epidemic is not over” traces the social and political history of AIDS. Taking a retrospective and contemporary look at the epidemic and the mobilisations it has generated, it aims to contribute to the fight against it. Indeed, putting Aids in a museum is not to bury it; on the contrary, it is to reaffirm its relevance, as shown by the title of the exhibition, which takes up a historic slogan of Act Up: “The epidemic is not over!”

Read more…
HIV/Aids The epidemic isn’t over!
Mucem.org

On Hart Island: Past Present & Future

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Please join Melinda Hunt - interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and founding director of The Hart Island Project - to discover the historical significance of one of the most mysterious and beautiful places in New York City, Hart Island. During this interactive presentation, Melinda will share historical documents, videos, and testimonies to engage us with the municipal burial place's rich history - intrinsically connected in one way or another with all New Yorkers. Free event with registration.

REGISTER

Read more…
On Hart Island: Past Present & Future
Alon Sicherman & Sean Vegezzi/The Hart Island Project

NYC Women’s Fund Showcase - AIDS Burials on Hart Island

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AIDS Burials on Hart Island series will premiere on NYC Women’s Fund Showcase on NYC TV channel 25, October 22, 2021 at 8 PM.

An encore broadcast will take place on November 19, 2021 at 8 PM

Read more…
NYC Women’s Fund Showcase - AIDS Burials on Hart Island
©2020 Melinda Hunt/The Hart Island Project

Open House New York 2021

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In this episode of The Gotham Center for New York City History’s Sites and Sounds podcast series, Melinda Hunt talks about Hart Island, the small landmass that lies half a mile from City Island, in the Bronx, on the Long Island Sound.

WATCH HERE

Read more…
Open House New York 2021
Alon Sicherman & Sean Vegezzi/The Hart Island Project

Storytelling tools for COVID-19 Webinar

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We’re please to announce the launch of our COVID-19 Initiative with new tools added to Traveling Cloud Museum for searching and claiming people who died from the pandemic in New York City and are now buried on Hart Island. 

The Hart Island Project is working to end the stigma for families who agreed to a City Burial. Please join us on Thursday, September 23, 2021 @7 PM for a webinar on how to claim and add stories or photos about someone buried on Hart Island who succumbed to COVID-19. 

REGISTER

Read more…
Storytelling tools for COVID-19 Webinar
COVID-19 burials on Hart Island

Hart Island Suite Premiere

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Jazz composer Anita Brown received a 2019 NYSCA award with support from The Hart Island Project as fiscal sponsor. The work was scheduled to premiere in 2020 and delayed due to COVID restrictions. Hart Island Suite tells the story of Anita's elder sister, Julie, who was buried on Hart Island before Anita was born. 

Read more…
Hart Island Suite Premiere

Hart Island Poem wins Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award

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Plough will announce the winners of its first annual Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award in an online event with Rhina P. Espaillat and Plough poetry editor A. M. Juster. The winning poet donated her prize to The Hart Island Project.

Register to attend on YouTube

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Hart Island Poem wins Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award
courtesy Plough Publishing House

Hart Island Project Annual Meeting

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The Hart Island Project annual meeting is open to the public and will take place on Zoom. If you were unable to attend you can watch it on the link below..

Video of Meeting

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Hart Island Project Annual Meeting
Anonymous AIDS graves on Hart Island - photo credit Sean Vegezzi ©2021 The Hart Island Project

Landscapes and Pandemics: The inequities of HIV/AIDS & COVID-19

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COVID-19 has disproportionately affected Black and Latinx people, as well as LGBTQ+ people, many who are living at the intersections of multiple marginalized identities. Over the past year, several comparisons have been made between the rise of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the US in the 80s and 90s and the current COVID-19 pandemic. We will hear from leading academics and activists and learn what these pandemics mean for communities across the US.

REGISTER

Read more…
Landscapes and Pandemics: The inequities of HIV/AIDS & COVID-19

NYC COUNCIL HEARING: Hart Island and the City's Public Burial Process & Assistance Program

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The public is invited to attend this hearing and testify. If you are planning on testifying live via video conferencing, please register no later than 24 hours before the hearing. 


Each person who intends on testifying live should register separately. Persons who do not register in advance will not be permitted to testify live via video conferencing. 


If you are interested in viewing the hearing, but do not wish to testify live, the hearing can be viewed at  https://council.nyc.gov/livestream/.  


Written testimony may be submitted without registration by emailing it to testimony@council.nyc.gov up to 72 hours after the close of the hearing. Thank you for your cooperation. 


For questions about accessibility or to request additional accommodations please contact swerts@council.nyc.gov or nbenjamin@council.nyc.govor (212) 788-6936 at least 72 hours before the hearing. All other questions should be directed to me at ebalkan@nyc.council.gov.

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AIDS Burials on Hart Island Workshop with Elsie Soto

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Join The Hart Island Project and Elsie Soto at a live workshop this Saturday, Feb. 27.

Watch video in advance here

Join us on Zoom at 11:00 AM for workshop starting at 11:15 AM-AIDS Burials on Hart Island as part of Bronx Parks Speak-Up 2021
Zoom link – Meeting ID: 893 3782 3394 / Password: 46690

Read more…
AIDS Burials on Hart Island Workshop with Elsie Soto

27th Bronx Parks Speakup from 10-11 AM

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Meet with The Hart Island Project to answer your questions about our newest initiative to designate Hart Island National Monument.

Watch slide show in advance on the History of and Potential for Hart Island here

 Join Zoom meeting starting at 10 AM here

Read more…
27th Bronx Parks Speakup from 10-11 AM
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