The Battle for Hart Island

Currently the most hotly debated development plan in NYC has nothing to do with new highrise buildings or stadiums or convention centers -- it has to do with that 1-mile long island off the coast of the Bronx called Hart Island.

Small and remote as it is, Hart Island has a storied history -- it was a training ground for black Union troops during the Civil War and, more recently, actual missilles were stored there during the Cold War. However, the island is best known as a potter's field where poor dead New Yorkers found their final rest. In addition, the island and its 19 buildings have been used for drug rehab, tuberculosis and psyche patients, prisoners, the homeless, and juvenile deliquents. 

Basically, the history of Hart Island is a history of a place that's out-of-sight and out-of-mind, just the kind of place where society likes to put people it wants to keep out-of-sight and out-of-mind.

It's those 19 buildings that are the subject of this controversy -- they are old, very historic, imbued with lots of architectural and actual history. But they're also decrepit, unused, and unsafe. Now the city wants to tear them all down and turn the island into a wildlife and graveyard preservation refuge, part of something called the Hart Island Project. Others want to retain the buildings and turn it into an historic attraction.

Both ideas would be noble uses of this oft-forgotten part of the city and, of course, only one vision can prevail. The controversy is currently bogged down in protracted arguments over process, public hearings, transparency rules, and lots of other boring legal stuff.

But the result will be fascinating -- either Hart Island will become a gorgeous natural habitat or an amazing site for previously unknown NYC history. 

For more Mr NYC coverage of Hart Island, go here. 

News Today, History Tomorrow -- May 31, 2019

Well, if today isn't a "hinge day" in NYC, I don't know what is! 

Today is the last day of radio station WPLJ before it becomes a "Christian music" station. At 7 PM, this legendary NYC rock station will be no more, a relic of another time and another city.

Today is also the first day of OMNY ("One Metro New York"), the new transit card the MTA is rolling out to replace the MetroCard by 2023. It'll start being used today on the 4, 5, 6 lines in Brooklyn and Manhattan, as well as all public buses in Staten Island. (This is what's called a "soft launch".) Unlike the current "swipe" of the MetroCard, all you'll have to do with the OMNY is "tap" (or scan it) it on an electronic reader, it will be a completely contact-less way to get onto public transportation. Soon the MetroCard will join the token as a relic -- instead, we'll OMNY our way around town.

So today, in a just a matter of hours, one part of the city's past is vanishing and another part of its future is arriving. 

Then there are a couple of issues that, if realized, will transform this city both socially and physically.

There's Hart Island -- the 150-year old pauper's cemetary off the coast of the Bronx that is closed to the public. The city council is now introducing a bill that will turn it into a public park (the  council speaker and mayor support it so it looks to be a done deal). Think of it -- not just another park or public space will be created but New Yorkers will have access to a whole new island, making this archipeligo of a town all the more ... archipeligo-ish. I once called Hart Island a "secret of NYC" but, if this bill passes and this island opens to the public, it will be a secret no more. 

And talking about taking something out of the dark into the light, one day soon New York might very well legalize prostitution -- otherwise known as "decrim." This is, as you might imagine, a divisive topic and many people have different ideas of what "decrim" should be. But the fact that this has a realistic chance of happening, that it's even being discussed, it transformative. Up until just a few years ago, the idea that something like this might happen seemed unimaginable -- like gay marriage or legal weed. Yet here were are. 

So while today might just seem like another day in NYC, it's not.

History is happening all around us!

The Secret Places of NYC

New York City abounds in ironies: it is geographically huge but its individual neighborhoods really make it a bunch of small towns. There are lots of places to live but it's almost impossible to find one that's available. It is the most populous city in America yet, in many ways, it's the perfect place to go if you're looking to be alone and live anonymously.

NYC is both a place to go and a place to get away to.

There is so much we know about the city, it's history, and what's in it. Yet, at the same time, there's vastly more that we don't know -- and there are lots of places in this city we know nothing about or would never think of going to (because we don't know they exist).

Take our history: a bunch of old New York City history books that were long out of print are now available for sale online. These include books of photographs of NYC from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. I love old pictures of NYC. Looking at them, you see a city both distant and familiar, a place you know and a place you don't. It's really amazing to see, for example, what Union Square looked like in 1900 and to see the buildings that survived and those that didn't. Another irony of old NYC: it's a place you know very well and, at the same time, not at all.

Or parks and public spaces: when you're looking to relax in public, we all think we know where to go: Central Park, Riverside Park, Battery Park, Prospect Park, Bryant Park, etc. You can hang out at public spaces at Lincoln Center or South Street Seaport. But there are lots more secret places that are right there out in the open called vest-pocket parks: places like Abingdon Square, Duane Park, and Jackson Square. These are nice little cozy places away from the roar of the crowd where you can go and mentally repair. And just this past week I found a new secret place: even though it's something of a monstrosity, the Trump Soho on Varick and Spring Streets has a nice little plaza behind it with lots of benches and trees. It's just off the corner and you wouldn't know it's there. When I passed by it the other day, at around noon on a weekday, it was nearly empty. It's a perfect place to go if you want to go read a book or listen to your IPod in peace. Also, I'd imagine that amorous young couples might find it a great make out spot. These are the little places that New Yorkers like me like to go and escape from the city -- right in the very heart of it (another irony indeed).

But the secrets of NYC aren't all charming. Did you know that NYC has it's very own paupers grave? A place where unclaimed dead bodies -- abandoned babies, homeless people who have frozen to death, elderly people with no family, poor people, etc. -- go to their final rest? Known innocently enough as a "potters fields", NYC's pauper's graves exist on Hart Island, a mile long place just off the coast of City Island in the Bronx. Hart Island is where Long Island Sound meets the Atlantic Ocean and is about as far from the rest of the city as possible. The bodies are sent there and the graves are dug by prisoners who are ferried in each day from Riker's. There are almost a million dead New Yorkers buried there and some people are now trying to find and locate body's so that they can be given a decent burial.

It's hard to imagine that anyone should ever end up in such a place. One can only feel sad for those people whose lives ended so sadly that that's where they ended up. And fortunately it's a part of our city that most of us don't see or experience, the kind of place we know exists but otherwise stays far from our own consciouses. But it's there, and it represents something sad and distressing, and it's just as much a part of our city as Rockefeller Center or the Brooklyn Museum. It's a secret of NYC that shouldn't be secret at all.

Classic Mr NYC

Several years ago I blogged about "The Secret Places of NYC", the places that exist here that many New Yorkers have never gone to or even heard about. 

One of them was Hart Island, the remote pauper's grave for the city's destitute and dead. For generations penniless New Yorkers were buried there, destined to be forgotten.

But they weren't all forgotten.  

Right now there's a tussle under way between the Mayor's office and the city council about who should control Hart Island. Currently the Corrections Department manages but some on the council want the Parks Department to handle it and also to put it under the supervision of the Chief Medical Examiner. This would, in theory, make it easier for family members to visit the island and locate the remains of their dead family members. Bone fragments are surfacing there and family members want access to them.

It'll be interesting to see how this issue plays out -- and it'll show how we treat the truly lesser among us.