A half-mile ferry ride from City Island takes visitors to one of New York City\u2019s quietest \u2014 and most complicated \u2014 places.<\/p>\n
Hart Island has served as the city\u2019s public cemetery since 1869. More than 1 million people are buried there, including people who were unclaimed or unidentified and those whose families requested a public burial. Many were laid to rest together in large trenches.<\/p>\n
Free walking tours led by Urban Park Rangers are opening more of that history to the public.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe goal, really, of this tour is to showcase how Hart Island is a New York story,\u201d Urban Park Ranger Fi Whalen said. \u201cThis place belongs to all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tour explores the island\u2019s different chapters. Rangers share stories about people incarcerated once helped with burials and cemetery maintenance. Visitors also learn about Solomon Riley, a Black businessman who dreamed of building an amusement park there where Black New Yorkers could escape racism and segregation.<\/p>\n
The island remains an active cemetery. It holds New Yorkers who died during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with people buried generations earlier.<\/p>\n
On the southern end are 33 individual graves separated from the island \u2019s larger burial areas. The people buried there died from AIDS-related complications, but their identities remain unknown.<\/p>\n
Records do not explain why they were isolated. Rangers said the fear and stigma surrounding AIDS at the time may have played a role.<\/p>\n
One grave, set the farthest away, holds the first child known to have died in New York City from an AIDS-related illness.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were loved in life,\u201d Whalen said. \u201cThey\u2019re neighbors from the past.\u201d<\/p>\n