New York car rentals - Hart Island and New York Car Rentals

When you travel to Hart Island with your New York car rentals you will heading to a small island in New York City at the western end of Long Island Sound. When you travel to Hart Island with your New York car rentals you will find that throughout its history, Hart Island has had a workhouse, a hospital, prisons, a Civil War internment camp, a reformatory and a Nike missile base. The island's area is 0.531 km with no permanent population. When you visit Hart Island with your New York car rentals today you will find that it serves as the city's potter's field and is run by the New York City Department of Correction.

A little history

In the middle of the 19th century, the island was called Lesser Minneford Island. The island was part of the 9 000 acre property purchased by Thomas Pell from the local Native Americans in 1654. In February 1869, New York City purchased the island from the Edward Hunter of the Bronx for $75,000.When you travel to Hart Island with your New York car rentals you will find that there are several versions of the origin of the island's name. Some people say it is due to the shape of the island while other sources claim that the word hart comes from the Middle English word for "deer”, which would have been appropriate as it was once a deer wildlife reserve.

The Cemetery

Hart Island is the location of a 101acre potter's field for New York City. You and your New York car rentals can get a chance to see the largest tax funded cemetery in the world! Burials on Hart Island began during the American Civil War. The city began using the land as a cemetery when a 24 year old woman named Louisa Van Slyke was the first person to be buried in the island's 45 acre public graveyard.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart_Island,_New_York - cite_note-nyt1-9 Burials of unknowns were in single plots and identified adults and children were also buried in mass graves. In 1913, adults and children under five were buried in separate mass graves. Unknowns are mostly adults. They are frequently disinterred when families are able to locate their relatives through photographs and fingerprints kept on file at the Office of the Medical Examiner. Adults are buried in trenches with three sections of 48 individuals to make disinterment easier. Children, mostly infants, are rarely disinterred and are buried in trenches of 1 000

The workhouse

In the late 19th century Hart Island became the location of a boys' workhouse which was an extension of the prison and almshouse on Blackwell's Island, now Roosevelt Island. There is a section of old wooden houses and masonry institutional structures dating back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries that have fallen into disrepair. These are now being torn down to provide new ground for burials. Military barracks from the Civil War period were used prior to the construction of workhouse and hospital facilities. None of the original Civil War Period buildings is still standing. In the early 20th century, Hart Island housed about two thousand delinquent boys as well as old male prisoners from Blackwell's penitentiary. This prison population moved to Riker's Island when the prison on Welfare Island (formerly Blackwell's Island) was torn down in 1936. Remaining on Hart Island is a building constructed in 1885 as a women's insane asylum, the Pavilion, as well as Phoenix House, a drug rehabilitation facility that closed in 1976.

Before you goˇ
For more information on Hart Island when you travel with your New York car rentals check out this website at hartisland.org

Check out the Bronx car rental All Car Rent a Car location at 138 City Island Avenue Bronx, NY 10464