New York City’s intertwining of parks and mass burial sites continues as the coronavirus death toll rises and victims are buried on Hart Island

As the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic in New York City continues to rise, grisly drone footage captured this week showed bodies of victims being buried in a trench within the city limits.

The footage also offered a grim glimpse into a little-known part of New York where the still functioning potter’s field of Hart Island holds more than a million bodies: overwhelmingly the poor, the anonymous and the unclaimed.

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Hart Island, less than a mile off the coast of the Bronx, has served as a potter’s field for more than 150 years. More than a third of those interred on the island are infants, laid to rest in trenches that can fit up to 1,000 bodies. Adults were buried in graves that could accommodate 150 people at a time.

New York City bought the island, a former prison for Confederate soldiers, in 1868, and the number of bodies buried on the 141-acre site quickly began to soar. The burials had been decreasing in the 21st century, but the coronavirus has led to a surge in deaths, and an unexpected spike in new burials.

About 25 bodies a week are normally interred on the island, buried by inmates at Rikers Island jail, the sprawling complex that houses some 10,000 people awaiting trial in New York City. The coronavirus has changed that, however. Burials are normally conducted on one day of the week, now they are taking place on five, with about 25 people being buried each day.

Aerial footage on Thursday showed workers at Hart Island in action, digging long trenches while some 40 coffins stood waiting to be interred. Rikers Island inmates have been spared the macabre task since the coronavirus hit, and the work is instead being done by contractors.

The sharp increase in the island’s massive body count is not quite what the city had planned for this year.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Drone pictures show heavy machinery next to a third trench on Hart Island amid the coronavirus pandemic in New York City on 8 April. Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters

In December New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, signed an order transferring management of Hart’s Island to the city’s parks department. Those whose loved ones are buried on the island hoped the change could make it easier to visit – currently a trip to the island can take months to schedule, through the department of corrections labyrinthine process.

The surge can be attributed, at least in part, to New York City cutting the amount of time a body can remain unclaimed. Under rules brought in since the virus hit the city, if a body is not claimed in 14 days it will be shipped to Hart Island and buried – temporarily at first, then permanently if the remains are still unclaimed.

The new 14-day rule was a quietly introduced switch from the previous practice, which gave families or friends 30 days to claim a body. More than 4,500 people have died in New York City from the coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The transfer of Hart Island management to the parks department recalls the historic intertwining of parks and mass burial sites in New York City.

Recent news reports had suggested Central Park could serve as a temporary burial site for the coronavirus dead, and while the city later said Manhattan’s flagship park would not be used as a grave, other parks have been previously used as resting sites for victims of widespread disease.

Washington Square Park is the most notorious of these. More than 20,000 people are buried beneath the park, a haven of greenery in the otherwise brick and concrete surrounds of Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest People walk in front of the arch at Washington Square Park on 22 March. Photograph: Jason Szenes/EPA

Many of the interred fell victim to a yellow fever outbreak that swept through the city in the early part of the 19th century. Others were laid to rest in Washington Square because they couldn’t afford to be buried privately. The body count was added to by a public gallows, erected at the site of what is today a fountain.

Bryant Park, a couple of miles north, was another potter’s field, serving as a burial ground for the poor and victims of disease from 1823 to 1840. Even further back, Madison Square Park, now a speck of greenery that lies before the tourist attraction of the Flatiron building, was a burial site for the poor.

Hart Island served other purposes throughout the 20th century. It was used as a barracks during the second world war, and a sometime overflow jail when Rikers Island was overcrowded. The island was used as a missile base during the cold war, and later a short-lived homeless shelter.

Throughout those iterations, and throughout the past 150 years, one thing has remained constant: the bodies have continued to arrive. The footage from Hart Island shocked many, but for this little island it was just the latest chapter in a long, sad history.