Ransom Riggs
NYC’s Isle of the Dead
by Ransom Riggs - March 29, 2010 - 7:19 AM

Most New Yorkers don’t even know it’s there. Hart Island, near the popular summer spot City Island, is one of the world’s largest cemeteries, and the U.S.’s largest potter’s field, where the indigent and unidentifiable have been buried en masse since just after the Civil War. Inmates from Riker’s Island perform the burials, at a rate of some 2,000 per week; there are more than 800,000 buried here altogether, three-deep in cheap wooden boxes, in long trenches that cover more than half the island. At one time the island also housed a prison, a boys’ workhouse, a Nike Ajax nuclear missile silo, and for four months in 1865, it was a prisoner of war camp used to house captured Confederate Troops, more than 250 of whom died and were buried here. The only grave with a marker is that of an unnamed baby who died in 1980, New York City’s first AIDS casualty, buried in isolation.

Unless you have a relative buried on the island, you can’t go there, so very few people ever get to see it for themselves. In 1978, a news crew visited the island for a day, and came away with a nice piece and some great footage of some buildings that don’t exist anymore, and of prisoners on burial detail — check out the way they throw the infants’ coffins to one another.

Photo by Joel Sternfeld, from his book about the island.

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Comments (11)

  1. I saw a movie on Scy-Fy (how I hate typing that) called “Island of the Dead” fro 2000 that appears to be based on this place if not filmed there.

    posted by Fred on 3-29-2010 at 10:21 am

  2. And maybe this movie as well:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_Shouldn%27t_Play_with_Dead_Things

    posted by Romeo Vitelli on 3-29-2010 at 12:18 pm

  3. I would love to know what happened to the seats from Ebbets Field or if they are still on the island.

    posted by Jay on 3-29-2010 at 12:40 pm

  4. Is this the also the spot that everyone was burried in the final scenes of Gangs of New York?

    The movie was just on over the weekend and the “grave point of veiw” showing the changing New York skyline is pretty powerful.

    posted by Tyler on 3-29-2010 at 12:51 pm

  5. Patricia Cornwell referred to this place in one of her books (Potter’s Field, I suppose)… I didn’t know it was a real place until reading this post. Interesting video!

    posted by ann on 3-29-2010 at 2:44 pm

  6. It’s also where the climax of “Don’t Say A Word” with Michael Douglas & Brittany Murphy took place. I remember it being pretty creepy.

    posted by Lucy on 3-29-2010 at 2:57 pm

  7. Couple of questions, just in case anyone knows… first of all, did I understand correctly that they recycle the burial ground every 25 years? Not sure how that would work, unless they’re taking a no-embalming, dust-to-dust approach.

    Also, if you identify a relative and claim the body… how? What if they’re
    in the middle of the trench, three layers down?

    Not major questions, but I we _flossers are an eclectic enough bunch that there might be somebody out there who knows the answer. ;-) Great article!

    My creepy reCaptcha: serious memory

    posted by Roger on 3-29-2010 at 3:11 pm

  8. Roger, according to Wikipedia, they “allow for sufficient decomposition” before they bury more people in the same trenches. (I couldn’t find the original source for that, however).

    Interesting article – it’s sad to think of not only the nameless people who are buried there, but also the ones who simply can’t afford another form of burial.

    posted by Sara on 3-29-2010 at 6:19 pm

  9. What an anomalous name Hart island and the people working there seem to be heartless1

    posted by Roly on 3-30-2010 at 5:38 am

  10. Thanks Sara!!!

    posted by Roger on 3-30-2010 at 4:50 pm

  11. Gosh, this video is over 35 years old!

    posted by BGA on 10-6-2010 at 10:50 am

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