Filed Under Rikers Timeline
1868: New York City Purchases Hart Island
The Department of Charities and Correction buys Hart Island to build a workhouse for older boys. The island will later serve many other purposes: a training ground for Civil War troops, a quarantine station for Yellow Fever, the site of a psychiatric hospital, an industrial school, a drug rehabilitation center, a tubercularium, and a prison. It is most well known for being New York’s potter’s field, or public cemetery. The dead are interred in pine boxes that are piled into trenches. In the absence of loved ones, detainees from Blackwell Island (and later Rikers), serve as pallbearers and grave diggers. Creator: This timeline is a collaboration between visual artist Isaac Scott and historian Dr. Shana Russell. Date: 1868
The Department of Charities and Correction buys Hart Island to build a workhouse for older boys. The island will later serve many other purposes: a training ground for Civil War troops, a quarantine station for Yellow Fever, the site of a psychiatric hospital, an industrial school, a drug rehabilitation center, a tubercularium, and a prison. It is most well known for being New York’s potter’s field, or public cemetery. The dead are interred in pine boxes that are piled into trenches. In the absence of loved ones, detainees from Blackwell Island (and later Rikers), serve as pallbearers and grave diggers.