Museum of City of New York Hosts Talk on Hart Island, 7/24
By: Christina Mancuso Jul. 15, 2013
Melinda Hunt, founding director of the Hart Island Project, will discuss Hart Island, the forbidden and forgotten cemetery off The Bronx shore, where New York City has buried its unclaimed dead for over a century.
Hart Island, now the largest cemetery in the United States with over one million burials (more than double the number at Brooklyn's historic Green-Wood), remains a removed and rural landscape, largely un-changed since Jacob Riis first photographed the burials in 1891. First purchased by New York City in 1868, "City Cemetery" opened on the island just a year later, employing older boys from the House of Refuge on Randall's Island as gravediggers for unknowns and people unable to afford private burials. To this day, the island remains a restricted area.
The event is co-sponsored by The Hart Island Project, The New York Academy of Medicine, and The Green-Wood Historic Fund, and presented in conjunction with A Beautiful Way to Go: New York's Green-Wood Cemetery.
WHEN: Wednesday, July 24 at 6:30 PM
WHERE: Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue, New York (btw. East 103rd and 104th Streets)
WHO: Melinda Hunt, visual artist, author, and founding director of the Hart Island Project
TICKETS: Reservations are required. Ticket prices: $6 Museum members; $8 seniors and students; $12 general public.
For more information or to register by phone, please call 917-492-3395.
Visit mcny.org for more details.
About the Museum of the City of New York
Founded in 1923 as a private, nonprofit corporation, the Museum of the City of New York celebrates and interprets the city, educating the public about its distinctive character, especially its heritage of diversity, opportunity, and perpetual transformation. The Museum connects the past, present, and future of New York City, and serves the people of the city as well as visitors from around the world through exhibitions, school and public programs, publications, and collections. For more information, visit http://www.mcny.org.
Directions: By bus: M1, M3, M4, or M106 to 104th Street, M2 to 101st Street.
By subway: Lexington Avenue #6 train to 103rd Street, walk three blocks west, or #2 or #3 train to 110th Street, walk one block east to Fifth Avenue, then south to 104th Street.
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