HART ISLAND NATIONAL MONUMENT
A Public Cemetery for NYC Covid-19 Victims
A Public Cemetery for NYC Covid-19 Victims
Location: Bronx, NY
Time: Spring 2021
Type: Individual
Instructor: N/A
Keywords: Climate Change / Park / Cemetery
Time: Spring 2021
Type: Individual
Instructor: N/A
Keywords: Climate Change / Park / Cemetery
Hart Island, long known as New York City’s potter’s field, has been thrust into the national spotlight once again due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For decades, this historic public cemetery has served as the final resting place for the city’s most marginalized and overlooked populations—those without families to claim them, those who could not afford a private burial, and those lost to public health crises that devastated communities but were often met with silence. Over one million individuals are interred here, including the victims of the 1918 influenza pandemic, the AIDS crisis, and countless others whose deaths reflect the deep systemic inequities within society.
Now, as the COVID-19 pandemic claims lives at an unprecedented scale, Hart Island has once again become a mass burial site, its trenches filled with the unclaimed victims of a global catastrophe. Rows of simple pine coffins, stacked in long, narrow plots, bear silent witness to the ongoing tragedy. The island, already a place of sorrow and neglect, now holds within its soil the weight of yet another chapter of loss.
Yet Hart Island faces more than just the burden of history. It is a place under siege—by natural forces, by spatial limitations, and by the complexities of its own legacy. Erosion and rising sea levels threaten to consume the land, accelerating the loss of burial space and challenging the island’s long-term sustainability. For years, Hart Island has remained physically and emotionally distant from the city it serves, hidden from public consciousness and marred by a fraught reputation as a place of abandonment rather than remembrance. Its stark, institutional burial practices—conducted for decades by inmates from Rikers Island—have reinforced the perception of Hart Island as a site of dispossession rather than dignity.
This project envisions a transformative future for Hart Island, one that acknowledges and honors its past while creating a space that is both sustainable and commemorative. By reimagining Hart Island as a dignified public cemetery and national monument, the goal is to turn a site of anonymity into one of recognition and respect. The vision includes ecological restoration to combat erosion, innovative burial practices that balance environmental and spatial concerns, and thoughtful design interventions that make the island more accessible to the public.
Hart Island has always been a place of remembrance, though often in the shadows. Now, it has the potential to become a meaningful space of reflection, healing, and national recognition—a monument not only to those lost, but to the resilience of the human spirit in the face of adversity.