A Million Bodies Are Buried Here. Now It’s Becoming a Park.

The morgue trucks, loaded with plain, unmarked pine boxes, still arrive regularly by ferry to Hart Island, a potter’s field where the city has long buried its unclaimed dead.

The island was once a penal colony, and it has been run since the 19th century by New York’s jail system, which used inmate gravediggers and kept it off limits until 2021, when the city transferred to its parks department.

Now, in a break with the policy of keeping Hart Island burials secretive and its graves unseen, the department is opening New York’s most forbidden place for public access. “For decades, Hart Island has been misunderstood and stigmatized,” said Sue Donoghue, parks commissioner. “But today is a new day.”

The city still conducts about 1,100 burials every year on Hart Island, adding to the million bodies already buried on this 131-acre strip off the coast of the Bronx. But in the coming months, the dead will share the island with nature classes and tours under the department’s Weekend Adventures series.

The events typically feature canoeing, hiking, archery and fishing jaunts — programming designed to both honor the dead and lift the stigma surrounding the island. An advocacy group has also developed a navigation and augmented reality tool that allows visitors to navigate the island and search burial records.

Sometime later this year, parks officials expect to open the programs to a limited number of users under “managed visitation,” a pilot intended to answer the delicate question of how to open access to an island that is home to acres of unmarked mass graves.

The city’s Human Resources Administration, which took over burial operations and records, has cleared undergrowth. The Department of Design and Construction has razed and removed 15 crumbling buildings, leaving panoramic views and a more open feel.

“It will be passive, scenic open space, not a place where people disembark and go at it, just to have fun,” said Mitchel Loring, a senior project planner with the parks department.

Loring said it was crucial to maintain the dignity of the burials that will continue to be “the primary function of the island.”

Rich with history, the island has been a prison, a sanitarium, a psychiatric hospital and a haven for bare-knuckle boxing. During the Civil War, it was a prison for Confederate soldiers and a training ground for a regiment of Black Union Army troops. Spared from demolition is a Catholic chapel built in the 1930s.

Elsie Soto, 40, who makes regular visits to the gravesite of her father, Norbert Soto, said she was pleased to see the recent upgrades.

“It’s still hallowed ground and deserves respect and dignity,” she said. “A park is going to set into motion a little more respect, like, ‘OK, Hart Island is changing, it’s not what it used to be’ — and that’s the goal.” (