A Cenotaph For Many

Abstract

Hart Island, located in the Bronx, New York City, is the only place to bury the bodies of the unclaimed or unidentified in the city. The next of kin of some individuals buried on Hart Island opted for public burial. Others may have a next of kin who is unknown or unreachable. Some are unidentified or do not have a next of kin. Many others were also buried during the AIDS epidemic and COVID-19 pandemic, in 1980 and 2020 respectively. The burial process is simple: Department of Correction staff and incarcerated individuals serving time on nearby Rikers Island travel by ferry to Hart Island. The bodies of the deceased are transported and placed in pine boxes. The boxes are stacked three deep in a 36-inch trench below the surface, burying the remains of 150 to 162 adults and 1,000 infants and fetuses per trench. This burial method and its spatial efficiency seem to be democratic, while consequently removing the association of the person to their body. Those forgotten deaths are the consequences of poverty, apathy, loneliness, and isolation in New York City. Through reflection on the deaths of many minorities, the thesis will celebrate and appreciate their invisible existences, dismantling the conventional spatial characteristics of a “cenotaph”—an empty tomb for one prominent person. What if a cenotaph can be for many minor individuals? This attitude will lead toward a new understanding of death and a shift in perception of a typical memorial space in terms of its form, materiality, and spatial experience.