Hart Island Map

Description: This map shows beaches, streets, trails, houses, buildings, monuments, churches, points of interest, and parks on Hart Island.

Description: This map shows where Hart Island is located on the New York City Map.

Description: This map shows where Hart Island is located on the New York State Map.

Hart Island is an island at the western end of Long Island Sound, east of City Island in the Bronx. It is about 1 mile (1.6 km) long and 0.33 miles (0.53 km) wide. Since 1869 it has been the site of New York City's public cemetery, where people who were unclaimed or whose families could not afford private burial are interred. More than one million people are estimated to be buried there, making it one of the largest public cemeteries in the United States.

Over its history the island has also held a training camp for United States Colored Troops during the Civil War, a prisoner-of-war camp, a psychiatric hospital, a tuberculosis sanatorium, a workhouse, a Nike missile base and a drug rehabilitation center. For more than a century, burials were carried out by inmates from Rikers Island. Victims of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 were also buried there.

For most of its history the island was run by the Department of Correction, and public access was heavily restricted. In 2019, the New York City Council passed legislation transferring jurisdiction to the Department of Parks and Recreation, and the transfer took effect in 2021. Relatives and members of the public can now visit the island by ferry on scheduled days.