12. Hart Island Ferry
The Hart Island vehicular ferry, an orange ferry run by the NYC Department of Transportation from City Island, gets special mention here. Hart Island is the city’s mass burial site, and most of the visitors are usually detainees from Rikers Island who work to bury the unclaimed bodies. The ferry also makes it convenient for NYC Health + Hospitals to deliver the bodies to be buried onto the island. There are also visitors who come to visit the burial sites of loved ones, and occasionally visits from press. The public can arrange with the Department of Corrections to visit on one day a month, but are not allowed beyond a viewing pavilion a short walk from the ferry landing on Hart island. One of the staff on a day we visited was wearing a Staten Island Ferry jacket, having previously worked on that line.
