We need a plan for Hart Island: NYC’s public cemetery must include the public

Last Tuesday was the first public tour conducted by urban park rangers of Hart Island, New York’s City public burial ground located half a mile to the east of City Island in the Bronx. But the twice a month free tours, ticketed via a lottery, only include access to the north part of the island where adult burials ended in 1989. At the peak of the AIDS epidemic, burials moved to the southern half of the island. So public tours do not include gravesites from the last 34 years or the anonymous AIDS graves.

Most people only learned about mass burials on Hart Island when drone videos were televised showing long trenches with pine boxes stacked on top of one another in rows during the pandemic. The videos revealed a burial practice begun in 1872 on Hart Island that few people other than inmates and correction officers have witnessed.

Those videos coincided with a shift in jurisdiction of Hart Island from the New York penal system to NYC Parks in October 2021. Management by NYC Parks seemed to signal that the island could finally step out from the shadow of ignominy surrounding it and become a place that honors the lives of those buried there. That may still be the case, but a recently completed burial capacity study by the city Human Resources Administration (HRA) poses significant concerns about the island’s future.

We believe the people buried on Hart Island and their families deserve better.

The HRA burial study recommends continuing the current, trench method of mass burial, with only slight modifications, until the city simply runs out of burial space. Cremation is briefly considered in the report, but dismissed due to the cost of running utilities to Hart Island, lack of adequate cremation facilities citywide and the environmental impacts of cremation. The study does not consider any broader scenarios for burial.

While we agree with the report’s conclusions on cremation, we believe current burial practices should be reconsidered. Hart Island is a beautiful location. Visitors comment on how majestic Long Island Sound feels when they are there. Moreover, Hart Island burials — while inhumane in their scale — are also the only natural burials available in New York City. We believe these are strengths the city can build upon for offering more humane burials and as a strategy for climate adaptation and landscape management.

Most families simply want to know where their loved one is buried and be able to visit the grave. The current trench burial practice on Hart Island undermines both desires while also producing poor conservation outcomes.

Because the current method relies on very large, deep trenches that remain open for weeks — often filling with water and posing a danger of collapse — park police must chaperone families to grave sites and wait with them while they mourn. An uncomfortable situation for all. Because families are restricted to visiting only one location, they notice if that location changes.

HRA’s recent decision to stop documenting the location of bodies with GPS coordinates means that park police and visitors are dependent on thin metal tubing with numbers written in magic marker to locate the proper burial plot. We hear from families who are taken to a different location every time they visit the island.

Heavy equipment necessary to dig 60 foot-long, eight foot deep trenches results in a largely denuded landscape that provides little in the way of habitat value or protection from erosion. Even after spending $13.2 million to stabilize the shoreline, 49 boxes filled with skeletal remains that had been scattered along the northern shoreline had to be reburied last November.

All cities struggle to handle the remains of those who are unclaimed or cannot afford a private burial. Yet there seems to be a lack of interest in reducing the stigma of city burials even now that the pandemic is over and the penal system is no longer in charge. HRA officials still refer to city cemetery interments as “indigent burials” and pressure families to apply for burial assistance, which is only enough to cover direct cremation. This position fails to recognize that many people choose a city burial out of religious or moral conviction.

While inhumane in its scale, the form of burial currently practiced on Hart Island is green. Hart Island is easily the largest natural burial ground in the United States. When we think of natural or green burials, we often picture expensive sites in rural, woodland areas. Such burials are costly because the body has to be transported by a licensed funeral director outside the city.

City burials on Hart Island don’t involve a funeral director and are free for anyone who dies within the five boroughs. The city does not cremate or embalm the body, nor does it use hardwood boxes or concrete vaults for interment. Funeral homes and private cemeteries employ these practices at great expense to both the environment and the bereaved. On Hart Island the body returns to the earth via natural cycles of decomposition. There is great beauty and value in this process, and it should be maintained.

The obvious issue for the city is space, and how best to use the limited space it has. It is in the question of space, and how to use it, that we believe the burial capacity study is fundamentally flawed — specifically around the issue of grave reuse. The burial study assumes that state nonprofit corporation laws that prohibit grave recycling in private cemeteries also apply to burials on public land. They don’t. The state has no jurisdiction on Hart Island. Burial plots can be reused once bodies decompose to skeletal remains.

In fact, grave reuse was practiced on Hart Island between 1931 and 1977. The same practice — placing exhumed remains in smaller boxes — is currently used to rebury bones exposed by erosion along the island’s steep north shore. The only reason Hart Island remains an active cemetery today is that plots have already been used several times.

While grave reuse may seem repellent to some, considering grave reuse on Hart Island opens the possibility that the dead could be buried in individual plots. Individual plots can be closed immediately, making it safe for people to walk the island freely. Individual plots also require less heavy equipment to dig and are thus less disruptive to the ecology of the island, facilitating better landscape restoration.

Modern grave reuse is typically referred to as “lift and deepen” — a process that places the exhumed body underneath the new grave, allowing the location of the body to remain unchanged. Such plots would not need to be marked in a traditional manner. To keep track of individual graves, the City Council could amend local code § 205.21 to require that burial records include GPS coordinates for each plot.

Using areas identified by the burial study, we estimate that switching to individual burials on Hart Island would necessitate graves being recycled every thirty years, a timeframe in line with grave reuse practices in many other parts of the world.

NYC Parks is set to begin planning for the future of Hart Island and has hired a contractor to begin a master plan that will include public comments.

We believe the city should opt to recycle graves and adopt a sustainable master plan to keep Hart Island Cemetery open for future generations. The plan should highlight the island’s beauty and its natural burials. It should explain that city burials are free, how they are conducted and what happens when a grave is reused.

Many will still want to hire their own funeral director and the city should support their choice through burial assistance. Those who choose a city burial should be able to visit Hart Island and know it is a place that recognizes and honors their dignity and the dignity of the deceased.

Hunt, an interdisciplinary artist, is the founding director of The Hart Island Project and president of its Board of Trustees. Boswell is an associate professor and undergraduate studies chair of landscape architecture at the Ohio State University. Gruber is a lecturer at Ohio State.