I grew up in the Bronx. I went to City Island plenty of times, rode my bike out to Orchard Beach, learned to drive in that parking lot. I barely knew Hart Island existed.

Nobody talked about it.

It’s a mile long and a third of a mile wide, sitting off the northeast Bronx next to City Island. No bridge. No power. A ferry runs over from City Island and that’s it.

The Siwanoy were there first. An English physician named Thomas Pell bought it in 1654 as part of a larger deal, and it stayed in that family for 120 years. There are records of illegal bare-knuckle fights held there with thousands attending and betting — because it sat outside local jurisdiction, which is exactly the kind of detail that tells you what an island is good for.

Official use started in 1864, training ‘colored’ troops of the 31st Infantry Regiment. Over 50,000 soldiers eventually trained there. Then in November 1864 it flipped from training troops to holding Confederate prisoners — 3,413 of them, 235 of whom died.

The first recorded burials on the island were indigent Union soldiers.

In 1868 the city bought the island for $75,000 and began burying the indigent and unclaimed. The first was Louisa Van Slyke, who died at Charity Hospital. Hart Island’s potter’s field replaced two earlier city graveyards — one where Washington Square Park is now, the other where the main branch of the New York Public Library stands.

By 1958 more than half a million people had been buried there.

The rest of the island had other lives: a quarantine during the 1870 yellow fever epidemic, a women’s psychiatric hospital, a school for troubled boys, a prison. In 1924 an entrepreneur named Solomon Riley bought a parcel and began building an amusement park for African Americans, who weren’t welcome at the Rye Beach parks or Dobbs Ferry. The city blocked it in 1925, citing the prisoners nearby. At least, that was the stated reason.

There are lost burial grounds all over this city. Hart Island is the one that never stopped.

This is one of the entries in New York City’s Little Black Book 1: Secrets, History, and Trivia of the World’s Greatest City.

Get your copy here: https://amzn.to/3TEzkJN