Since then, Hart Island has been the location of a Union Civil War prison camp, a psychiatric institution, a tuberculosis sanatorium, a potter's field used for both individual and mass burials, a homeless shelter, a boys' reformatory and workhouse, a jail, and a drug rehabilitation center.

Access to the island was restricted by the Department of Correction, which operated an infrequent ferryboat service and imposed strict visitation quotas.

[5] Another version holds that it was named in reference to deer that migrated from the mainland during periods when ice covered that part of Long Island Sound.

[1] In 1869, a 24-year-old woman named Louisa Van Slyke, who died in Charity Hospital, was the first person to be buried in the island's 45-acre (180,000 m2) public graveyard.

[19] By 1880, The New York Times described the island as "the Green-Wood of Five Points", comparing an expansive cemetery in Brooklyn with a historically poor neighborhood in Manhattan.

[26] In 1924, John Hunter sold his 4-acre (1.6 ha) tract of land on Hart Island's west side to Solomon Riley, a millionaire real estate speculator from Barbados.

[27] Riley subsequently proposed to build an amusement park on Hart Island, which would have served the primarily black community of Harlem in Manhattan.

[7]: 141–142  It was referred to as the "Negro Coney Island"[27] because at the time, African Americans were banned from the Rye Playland and Dobbs Ferry amusement parks in the New York City area.

[8] In 1985, sixteen bodies of people who died from AIDS were buried in deep graves on a remote section of the southern tip of the island because at the time it was feared that their remains may be contagious.

[43] An unnamed infant victim of AIDS is buried in the only single grave on Hart Island with a concrete marker that reads SC (special case) B1 (Baby 1) 1985.

[45][47] Another media work, the 2018 documentary One Million American Dreams, documents the history of Hart Island and delves briefly into the lives of various individuals buried there.

[48][49] Prior to the 2022 demolitions, there had been a section of old wooden houses and masonry institutional structures dating back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but these buildings had fallen into disrepair.

[61] The New York City Department of Social Services awarded a $3.3 million contract to JPL Industries in October 2021 for the demolition of the deteriorated structures.

[6][67][68][70] According to a 2006 New York Times article, there had been 1,419 burials at the potter's field during the previous year: of these, 826 were adults, 546 were infants and stillborn babies, and 47 were dismembered body parts.

[18] One-third of annual burials are infants and stillborn babies, which has been reduced from a proportion of one-half since the Children's Health Insurance Program began to cover all pregnant women in New York State in 1997.

In 2022, The Washington Post wrote that the island's recent interments included "a professional ballet dancer, a nurse, a software engineer, a scuba instructor and an acclaimed musical composer.

[53][75] The bodies of adults are frequently disinterred when families are able to locate their relatives through DNA, photographs and fingerprints kept on file at the Office of Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York.

An investigation into the handling of the infant burials was opened in response to a criminal complaint made to the New York State Attorney General's Office in 2009.

[80] During the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, Hart Island was designated as the temporary burial site for people who had died from COVID-19 if deaths overwhelmed the capacity of mortuaries.

[92][93] A lawsuit, concerning "place of death" information redacted from the Hart Island burial records, was filed against New York City's government in July 2008 and was settled out of court in January 2009.

[95] The American novelist Dawn Powell was buried on Hart Island in 1970, five years after her death, after her remains had been used for medical studies and the executor of her estate refused to reclaim them.

Academy Award winner Bobby Driscoll, who was found dead in 1968 in an East Village tenement, was buried on Hart Island because his remains could not be identified in a timely fashion.

[96] T-Bone Slim, the labor activist, songwriter, and Wobbly, was buried on Hart Island after his body was found floating in the Hudson River.

[101][102][103] Historian Thomas Laqueur writes: Woody Guthrie's song about the unnamed Mexican migrant dead has had a long resonant history.

Hunt, in an emotionally related gesture, has researched, for years, in order to publish the names of as many as 850,000 paupers who lie in 101 acres of Hart Island where the city buries its anonymous dead.

The map displays nearly 69,000 intact burials and allows people who knew the deceased to add stories, photographs, epitaphs, songs and videos linked to a personal profile, as well as identify those who died of AIDS-related illnesses.

[108][109] In 2012, Westchester Community College hosted an art exhibition of people whose graves were located through the Hart Island Project with Hunt's help.

[116] On October 28, 2011, the New York City Council Committee on Fire and Criminal Justice held a hearing titled "Oversight: Examining the Operation of Potter's Field by the N.Y.C., Department of Correction on Hart Island".

[135] An ecumenical group named the Interfaith Friends of Potter's Field and another organization called Picture the Homeless has also advocated for making the island more accessible.

[113] In July 2015, the Department of Correction instituted a new policy, wherein up to five family members and their guests were allowed to visit grave sites on one weekend per month.