News

An Urban System of Death

By

Today, as space for interment within the five boroughs becomes ever more limited and expensive, and as concerns about environmental and spatial sustainability come to the fore, designers and cemetery stewards are beginning to envision new urban systems of death. When every inch is contested, how can space for contemplation and remembrance be preserved, even if space for “traditional” burial is not?

Read more… An Urban System of Death
©2018 The Hart Island Project

He died in New York in 1989. Now Ferg Griffin is coming home

By

Fergus Griffin is no longer missing. His Hart Island clock stopped ticking after 28 years, 241 days, 38 minutes and 15 seconds, when family members posted loving tributes to him on hartisland.net, following his positive identification via DNA testing.

Read more… He died in New York in 1989. Now Ferg Griffin is coming home
Fergus Griffin in 1983

Corey Johnson gets serious about fixing an ‘indefensible’ Hart Island

By

New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson plans to mount an aggressive effort to turn Hart Island — the potter’s field where prisoners bury New York’s poor in mass graves — into a more publicly accessible cemetery.


And he says he'll do so even if it means overriding the will (and veto) of Mayor Bill de Blasio.


“Once you visit Hart Island, it's very apparent and clear that the current state of affairs on Hart Island is..." Johnson paused to find the right word: "indefensible.”

Read more… Corey Johnson gets serious about fixing an ‘indefensible’ Hart Island
Ydanis Rodriguez/New York City Council

Council Speaker Johnson Remembers Those Forgotten on Hart Island

By

Hart Island is out of sight and out of mind for many New Yorkers, but the small plot of land has a significant spot in the city’s history.

During the 1980s, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, thousands of bodies were buried on the island in what has commonly become known as Potter’s Field.

It’s not clear the exact number of AIDS victims that are buried there and unfortunately, state officials have been reluctant to investigate.

Though, just days before World AIDS Day, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson visited the island to pay respects.Arriving on Tuesday, he called his visit “emotional” and noted that the mass graves seemed forgotten there.

Read more…

Visiting New York City’s early AIDS graves

By

On Tuesday, the City Council speaker, Corey Johnson, took a tour of Hart Island, off the coast of the Bronx, where the city buries its unclaimed dead. He asked to be taken to a remote spot on the island’s southernmost tip where in 1985 the city buried some of the earliest casualties of AIDS in an effort to quarantine them.

The graves were in an overgrown area and some of the headstones were toppled over, said Mr. Johnson, who is the city’s first openly gay male speaker and is H.I.V. positive.

“I was sort of taken aback that that area felt sort of neglected,” he said. Mr. Johnson said the visit strengthened his support for transferring the jurisdiction of the island from the Department of Corrections to the Parks Department.

He added, “I knelt down in front of one of the markers and closed my eyes for a minute and thought of all the gay men who lost their lives.”

Read more… Visiting New York City’s early AIDS graves
Jacob Tugendrajch/New York City Council Speaker's Office

A New Memorial Service for Neil Harris Jr., This Time With His Family

By

Back on April 30, 2017, the West Side Rag reported on a memorial service that was held at the Christian Community Church on West 74th Street for “Stephen”, the young homeless man who passed away in Riverside Park on March 9, 2017.

Read more… A New Memorial Service for Neil Harris Jr., This Time With His Family
A family photo of Neil Harris, Jr., from 2010

After her son went missing 4 years ago, mom finds closure

By

For four years, Susan Hurlburt wondered what happened to her son.

Neil Harris Jr. was last seen at the Inwood LIRR  station wearing a hoodie under a thick Carhartt jacket on Dec. 12, 2014. She hadn’t heard from him since.

Read more… After her son went missing 4 years ago, mom finds closure
Craig Ruttle/Newsday

Hart Island: New York's Island of the Dead

By

It is a hitherto little-known part of the history of AIDS in New York: Probably several thousand died as a result of AIDS, for whose burial no one felt responsible, were buried in the 1980s and 1990s on the former prison island Hart Iceland in anonymous mass graves. The Hart Island Project now helps to restore their identity to these forgotten dead.

Read more… Hart Island: New York's Island of the Dead
The Hart Island Project

'It is very painful to have someone you love end up here'

By

Hart Island, New York City's potter's field, is crumbling from years of neglect. But now some politicians and advocates want to refurbish the place, allow more visitors and recognize its historical significance.

Read more… 'It is very painful to have someone you love end up here'
Charles Eckert for Newsday

The New York Times Close-up

By

N.Y. Times Metro reporter and columnist Corey Kilgannon tells us about the quest to have Hart Island, the final resting place for the disenfranchised, open to the public– he’s joined by their advocate, Melinda Hunt, founder of The Hart Island Project.

Read more… The New York Times Close-up
Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Hope Renewed For Unknown Thousands Among Hart’s Island’s Dead

By

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – Action is finally being taken to stop one of New York’s most populated graveyards from falling into Long Island Sound.


This year marks the 150th anniversary of Hart Island, a little known Potter’s Field in New York City, reports CBS2’s Natalie Duddridge. 

Read more… Hope Renewed For Unknown Thousands Among Hart’s Island’s Dead
CBS News

Finding space in New York City’s cemeteries

By

Just as the rural cemeteries of the 19th century radically reevaluated American approaches to death, it’s time to rethink what we want New York’s cemeteries to be in the 21st century. Hart Island, sequestered as it is and with limited accessibility, may not be a candidate for public programming, but it could be more integrated into the city with improved access, which would also alleviate the stigma of being interred in its isolated grounds.

Read more… Finding space in New York City’s cemeteries
Max Touhey

Project Helps Locate Lost AIDS Victims Buried On New York's Hart Island

By

There's an island in New York City just off the Bronx that's used to bury the dead who are unclaimed, called Hart Island. During the AIDS epidemic when not much was known about the disease, many people who died of AIDS and whose bodies were unclaimed were buried there.

Read more… Project Helps Locate Lost AIDS Victims Buried On New York's Hart Island
Seth Wenig/AP

Dead of AIDS and Forgotten in Potter’s Field

By

The bodies reached Hart Island on a ferry like all the others, in spare wooden boxes and bound for ignominious mass interment off the coast of the Bronx where New York City buries its unclaimed dead by the hundreds in long, shallow trenches.

But when these 17 bodies arrived in 1985, the island’s hardened crews, used to burying dozens of indigent people per week, recoiled. These were different. They had died from a widely feared nascent disease called AIDS, an illness that at the time had a skyrocketing death toll.

Read more… Dead of AIDS and Forgotten in Potter’s Field
Todd Heisler for New York Times

Councilman resurrects plan to turn graveyard to park

By

A Manhattan lawmaker has revived a plan to transform the Dickensian pauper’s graveyard on Hart Island into publicly accessible parkland — and led a rare media tour of the burial ground Wednesday to promote the idea.

Read more… Councilman resurrects plan to turn graveyard to park
James Messerschmidt

City Council proposes public park on Hart Island

By

THE BRONX -The City Council is pushing to create a public park and easier accessibility to Hart Island.

City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez introduced two bills about the island earlier this month.

The proposed legislation would transfer jurisdiction of the island from the Department of Correction to the Parks Department. It would also establish a public ferry service.

Read more… City Council proposes public park on Hart Island
News 12

Erosion unearths bones on New York’s island of the dead

By

NEW YORK (AP) — Storms and the tides are unearthing the long-hidden bones of Hart Island, creating eerie scenes of skulls, femurs and collarbones on this sliver of land where New York City’s destitute dead have for 150 years been sent off to be unceremoniously buried and forgotten.

Read more… Erosion unearths bones on New York’s island of the dead
©Greg Gulbransen/The Hart Island Project

Bones emerge on Hart Island, where inmates bury New York paupers

By

Annette Gallo was 10 years old when her brother Peter sent her a letter, from his orphanage to hers: “Last Wednesday morning something bad happened to papa.”

Read more… Bones emerge on Hart Island, where inmates bury New York paupers

‘Bones Beach:’ Hart Island Erosion Unearths Human Skeletons

By

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – Hart Island, a massive burial ground near the Bronx, is eroding, unearthing human skeletons along the shoreline.

Read more… ‘Bones Beach:’ Hart Island Erosion Unearths Human Skeletons
CBS News

Erosion on Hart Island Exposes Human Remains

By

City workers are making emergency repairs to the public cemetery on Hart Island after photographers documented how human remains had become exposed to the elements.

Read more… Erosion on Hart Island Exposes Human Remains
Greg Gulbransen/The Hart Island Project

Events

There are no upcoming events

Past events

The Hart Island Project © 2024
Website by Webmine