Hart Island

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Hart Island
Hart Island (2012)
Hart Island (2012)
Waters Long Island Sound
Archipelago Pelham Islands
Geographical location 40 ° 51 ′ 13 ″  N , 73 ° 46 ′ 14 ″  W Coordinates: 40 ° 51 ′ 13 ″  N , 73 ° 46 ′ 14 ″  W
Hart Island (New York City)
Hart Island
length 1.5 km
width 400 m
surface 53.1 ha
Residents uninhabited

Hart Island , sometimes referred to as Hart's Island , is a small New York City island at the western end of the Long Island Sound . Its area is 0.531 km². It is approximately 1.5 km long and 400 m wide and is located north of City Island in the group of Pelham Islands . The island is the easternmost part of the Bronx borough and there is a poor cemetery on it. Entering the island is generally not allowed. According to the 2000 census, there are no permanent residents there.

history

In the middle of the 19th century the island was called Lesser Minneford Island . The island was part of an approximately 3700 hectare estate that was bought from the local Indians by the doctor Thomas Pell (brother of the mathematician John Pell ) in 1654. In 1868, the City of New York bought the island from the Hunter family of the Bronx for $ 75,000.

The origin of the current name is obscure. According to a modern legend , a woman named Mrs. Hart, a childless widow, inherited Lesser Minneford Island and donated the island to the City of New York or the borough and that the island was named after her, which contradicts the fact that the island was bought by the city of New York. On Hard Iceland was a prisoner of war camp of the Union during the Civil War , a mental hospital , a hospital for tuberculosis patients and a school for boys.

Hart Island from City Island

Potter's Field

On Hart Island there is an approximately 18 hectare poor cemetery ( Potter's Field ), one of the most famous of its kind in the USA and the largest in the world. The cemetery was established in 1868. More than 850,000 dead are buried here. About 25 per week and 1500 per year are added, many of them infants , stillborns or homeless. In the wake of the AIDS crisis, several thousand people who had died of AIDS were buried on Hart Island, be it because relatives could not be located, families refused to care for the dead or funeral directors refused to accept AIDS. Inmates from the nearby prison island of Rikers Island are used as gravedigger . The dead are buried in trenches dug by low-paid prisoners. Small children are placed in coffins the size of a shoebox, which are stacked five coffins high and 20 coffins wide. Adults are buried in simple, box-like pine coffins that are stacked three coffins high and two coffins across. Potter's Field is also used to bury amputated body parts in boxes labeled “limbs”. There are no ceremonies at the funerals and no individual markings are set up. The American novelist Dawn Powell was buried here in 1970, five years after her death, the former Disney child star Bobby Driscoll was also buried in Potter's Field in 1968, he died lonely and impoverished. The showdown of the film Don't Say a Word (2001) also takes place on Potter's Field.

In April 2020, the City of New York hired contract workers to bury those who died during the Covid-19 pandemic in the cemetery. New mass graves were dug specially for this purpose.

Memorial and missile base

In addition to Potter's Field, there is a memorial at the north end of the island. The memorial, an upright white square with a crucifix, was erected by New York prisoners in honor of the unknown dead. There are also decommissioned missile silos for Nike Ajax missiles, which from 1955 to 1961 belonged to the US military base Fort Slocum, which was located on David's Island , near the monument .

sightseeing

Fordham Street Pier and Ferry on City Island to Hart Island

The New York Prison Authority, the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision , operates a ferry that connects the island and Fordham Street Pier on City Island. However, Hart Island and the pier are restricted areas. Unauthorized entry is a criminal offense and can result in a fine of $ 600 and a year in prison.

The prison authorities allow visits approximately every five years. Visitors can see the missile silos from the outside, the nearby memorial, and some historic, decaying houses, some of which date back to 1850. There are more recent proposals to convert the Ajax missile silos and abandoned complex into a museum with tours and gift shops.

The Hart Island Project is a private initiative that tries to enforce accessibility for everyone and to remove the anonymity of the funerals.

Others

In the novel Gideon's sword by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child , the protagonist Gideon Crew's “final battle” takes place on the island.

literature

  • Mario Kaiser (2002): The island of the dead. In: mare . The Journal of the Seas, No. 33, pp. 90-97. (Five photos by Joel Sternfeld illustrate the article.)

Web links

Commons : Hart Island, Bronx  - Collection of images, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stern Online: Mother is allowed to go to her baby's grave for the first time after 12 years on April 5, 2016
  2. ↑ Final Exits: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of How We Die by Michael Largo, HarperCollins Publishers, New York City: 2006, ISBN 978-0-7394-7539-3 . Pages 407-408.
  3. ↑ [1]
  4. ↑ Reuters: New York City Hires Laborers to Bury Dead in Hart Island Potter's Field Amid Coronavirus Surge . In: The New York Times . April 9, 2020, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed April 9, 2020]).
  5. ↑ Coronavirus: Much more burials! The Dead Island of New York. Retrieved April 9, 2020 .
  6. ↑ www 20minuten ch, 20 minutes, 20 min. Www.20min.ch: New York's secret island of the dead. Retrieved April 9, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Felix Wadewitz: Island of the Lonely Dead on www.zeit.de, July 7, 2010
  8. ↑ Reuters: New York City Hires Laborers to Bury Dead in Hart Island Potter's Field Amid Coronavirus Surge . In: The New York Times . April 9, 2020, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed April 9, 2020]).
  9. ^ The forbidden island of the dead in New York
  10. ↑ Axel Schock : Hart Island: New York's island of the forgotten AIDS dead. In: magazin.hiv. November 2, 2018, accessed on July 8, 2020 (German).
  11. ↑ www 20minuten ch, 20 minutes, 20 min. Www.20min.ch: New York's secret island of the dead. Retrieved April 9, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Reuters: New York City Hires Laborers to Bury Dead in Hart Island Potter's Field Amid Coronavirus Surge . In: The New York Times . April 9, 2020, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed April 9, 2020]).
  13. ↑ Julia Marsh, Jorge Fitz-Gibbon: NYC starts burying coronavirus victims on Hart Island potter's field. In: New York Post. April 9, 2020, accessed April 10, 2020 .
  14. ^ The Hart Island Project