You’ve probably flown over it without knowing. If you’ve ever taken a window seat on a flight into LaGuardia, you might have noticed a long, sliver of green sitting in the Long Island Sound, just off the coast of the Bronx. It looks peaceful. From thousands of feet up, it looks like just another piece of restricted coastal land. But Hart Island New York Potter's Field is actually the largest tax-funded cemetery in the world. It’s a place where over a million souls are buried, many of them in mass graves, and for over a century, it was basically a forbidden zone for the public.
It's a heavy place. Honestly, it’s a bit eerie if you think about the sheer scale of it. Since 1869, New York City has used this 131-acre island to bury the "unclaimed"—the poor, the marginalized, the stillborn infants, and those whose families simply couldn't afford a private funeral. For decades, the Department of Correction ran the show. Think about that for a second. To visit a loved one's grave, you had to deal with the same agency that runs Rikers Island. You had to book a ferry, clear security, and often, you weren't even allowed to go to the specific plot where your relative was buried. It was cold. It was bureaucratic. And for many New Yorkers, it was a source of deep, lingering shame.
But things are changing.
The Shift from Prison Control to Public Park
For a long time, the Hart Island New York Potter's Field was handled by inmate labor. Inmates from Rikers were paid a pittance to dig the trenches and stack the pine coffins three deep. It was a system built on invisibility. If you ended up on Hart Island, the city was essentially saying you didn't count.
That changed in late 2019 when the New York City Council passed a package of bills to transfer jurisdiction from the Department of Correction to the Department of Parks and Recreation. It was a massive win for activists like Melinda Hunt, who founded the Hart Island Project. She spent years fighting for the right of families to simply see where their people were laid to rest. Now, the island is technically a park, though it doesn't look like Central Park. There are no swing sets. No picnic blankets. It’s a place of "passive recreation," which is a fancy way of saying it’s a site for reflection and memory.
The transition hasn't been seamless. Moving a century of burial records and managing a crumbling infrastructure of abandoned buildings—remnants of the island’s past as a psychiatric hospital, a boy’s reformatory, and even a Cold War Nike missile site—is a logistical nightmare.
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Who Actually Ends Up on Hart Island?
There’s a common misconception that everyone at the Hart Island New York Potter's Field was homeless or "unclaimed." That’s not quite right. While many are indeed unidentified, a huge chunk of the people buried there have families.
Sometimes, a family just can't scrape together the $5,000 to $10,000 required for a basic private burial in New York City. Sometimes, a person dies alone in a hospital, and the bureaucracy moves faster than the notification process. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the island saw a massive surge in burials. Images of workers in HAZMAT suits lowering coffins into trenches became a global symbol of the city's struggle. It was a gut-punch for the city. It forced people to look at the island who had ignored it for fifty years.
Famous people are there too. Bobby Driscoll, the voice of Disney’s Peter Pan and the first child actor to sign a contract with Walt Disney, died penniless in an abandoned tenement and was buried in a mass grave on Hart Island before anyone realized who he was. His grave is unmarked. That’s the reality of the potter’s field. Whether you were a child star or a person who died on a park bench, you get the same pine box and the same coordinates in a ledger.
The Logistics of the Mass Graves
The burial process at Hart Island New York Potter's Field is utilitarian. It’s about space. In the adult trenches, coffins are stacked in groups of 150. For infants, the numbers are even more staggering—thousands can be buried in a single trench.
Each coffin has a number. That number corresponds to a map. If you're looking for a specific person, you don't look for a headstone; you look for a concrete marker with a number on it. It’s a grid system.
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- Adults: Buried in trenches roughly 15 to 20 feet deep.
- Infants: Buried in separate areas, often much closer together.
- Identification: The city now maintains an online searchable database, which is a huge step up from the old handwritten ledgers that were often lost or damaged by fire.
Walking through the island today, you'll see small white "GPS markers." The Parks Department is trying to make the site more navigable for descendants. It’s a slow process because the soil is unstable in some areas due to erosion. The island is literally shrinking into the Sound, and the city has had to spend millions on riprap—big rocks used to shore up the coastline—to keep the graves from washing away.
Why the Stigma is Finally Fading
New York is a city of layers. We live on top of each other, and apparently, we’re buried on top of each other too. The "potter's field" concept comes from the Bible—the field bought with Judas’s "thirty pieces of silver" to bury strangers. For a long time, that "stranger" status carried a heavy social weight. It meant you failed. It meant nobody loved you.
But the modern perspective is shifting toward seeing Hart Island as a site of collective memory. It’s a historical record of the city’s various crises. You can see the waves of the 1918 flu, the AIDS epidemic of the 80s and 90s, and now COVID-19. It’s a map of who the city failed at any given moment. By making it a park, the city is finally admitting that these people are part of the New York story. They aren't just "corrections" problems; they're neighbors.
The Hart Island Project has done incredible work "humanizing" the data. They’ve collected stories and photos from families, turning a number in a ledger back into a face. When you read about a mother who had to choose between paying rent and burying her stillborn son, the "stigma" of the potter's field evaporates. It becomes a story about poverty and the high cost of living (and dying) in New York.
Visiting the Island Today
If you want to visit the Hart Island New York Potter's Field, you can’t just hop on a Citi Bike and roll over there. It’s still one of the most restricted spots in the five boroughs.
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You have to register through the NYC Parks website. They offer "ambulatory visits," where you can walk to a specific grave site if you're a family member, and "gravesite visits" for the general public that are more limited. The ferry departs from City Island in the Bronx.
It’s a quiet boat ride. Usually, the only sound is the water and the gulls.
Once you land, the atmosphere is heavy. There’s a lot of decay. The old buildings are fenced off because they’re full of asbestos and lead paint, and they’re literally falling down. But the natural beauty of the island is starting to reclaim the space. There are deer on the island. There are migratory birds. It’s becoming a sanctuary in more ways than one.
What to Know Before You Go
- Documentation: If you are a family member, bring any documentation you have, though the Parks Department usually verifies your connection via their database beforehand.
- Transportation: Give yourself plenty of time to get to City Island. It’s a hike from Manhattan or Brooklyn.
- Expectations: Don't expect a polished cemetery experience. There are no flowers for sale. There are no marble angels. It is a field of grass and markers.
- Photography: Photography used to be strictly banned. Under Parks Department rule, it’s more relaxed, but there are still privacy considerations, especially during active burial days.
Actionable Steps for Families and Researchers
If you suspect a family member might be buried at Hart Island, don't just guess. The process for finding them is much more transparent than it used to be.
- Check the Database: The NYC Department of Hospitals and the Department of Parks and Recreation maintain a digital record. Search by name and year of death.
- Contact the Hart Island Project: This non-profit is the gold standard for advocacy. They can help you navigate the bureaucracy if the city’s records are confusing.
- Request a Visit: Use the NYC Parks online portal to book a spot on the ferry. Slots fill up weeks in advance because the ferry capacity is small.
- Consider Disinterment: Believe it or not, you can actually move a body from Hart Island to a private cemetery later if your family’s financial situation changes. It requires a funeral director and a permit, but it happens more often than you’d think.
The Hart Island New York Potter's Field is no longer a secret kept behind prison walls. It’s a part of the city’s public landscape. While the history is tragic and the scale of the mass graves is hard to wrap your head around, the openness of the site today is a sign of a more compassionate city. It’s about time we stopped hiding our dead.
To get started with a search or to schedule a visit, go directly to the NYC Parks Hart Island official page. They handle all ferry manifests and site access requests. If you are looking for specific historical records prior to 1977, you may also need to reach out to the Municipal Archives of the City of New York, as some older ledgers are still being digitized for the public.