A Bronx-based potter’s Field that’s been in use since the Victorian era may get a new life.
Part of Hart Island, a 130-acre isle off mainland Bronx that has been used as a public cemetery since 1869, may become the city’s newest park after a Queens lawmaker vowed to revisit a measure that would bring it under the jurisdiction of the Parks Department.
On Tuesday morning, the first snow flurries of the season fell on New York’s potter’s field, drifting down into an open trench, dusting the dirt next to hundreds of corpses in bare wooden caskets.
Kelly ventures to mysterious islands around New York to unearth the secrets that lie hidden in their past. On Hart Island, she meets with experts who enrich our understanding of the site’s rich history: before it became the city’s cemetery for unclaimed bodies, Hart Island was the training ground for African American regiments during the Civil War, as well as a mental asylum and hospital site
