Human Bones Resurface in Washington Square Park
By Jay Corcoran and Veronica Zaragovia

University students cross Washington Square Park on their way to class, chess hustlers look for a match and locals walk their barking dogs in present-day Greenwich Village.

But when New York City purchased the eight-acre space in the 1780s, it was used for the dead. Thousands of people were buried there between 1797 and 1825, among them the indigent, victims of the city’s 1798 cholera epidemic, which took 1,310 lives, and wealthy people who died of yellow fever. At the time churches feared that parishioners who died of contagious diseases could pollute the grounds of church cemeteries.

Late last month, archaeologists hired by the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation uncovered bones of the deceased when they were testing the park’s soil near its fountain because of ongoing park renovations that started last spring and are slated to continue through 2009.

Pat McKee, manager of the dog run in Washington Square Park, said she saw a rib cage last month, beyond a fence near the dog run. The bones unearthed belong to approximately five bodies, and are expected to remain in place underneath a protective slab of wood, said Amanda Sutphin, director of archaeology for the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

This is not the first time bones have resurfaced. In 1890, they were found during the construction of the historic marble arch on the park's north side, designed by Sanford White. In the 1960s, a Con Edison project uncovered bones in the northeast corner of the park.

Among all the bones, one set may be of Rose Butler, a young black woman of an unknown age, who was hanged for arson in the 1800s from the so-called Hangman's Tree that stands on the northwest corner of the park. Butler was buried in the park after her execution, wrote archaeologist Joan Geismar in a study of the park commissioned by New York City.

A present-day potter’s field exists at Hart Island, northeast of City Island and northwest of Rikers Island, administered by the city's Correction Department.

According to the Correction Department, the term “potter’s field,” which means a place for public burial of poor and unknown people, can be traced to a passage from the Gospel of Saint Matthew (27:3-8), which says: “Then Judas, which had betrayed Him, saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests ... and they took counsel, and bought with them the potter’s field to bury strangers in.”

At the moment no surface markers identify the remains. Christina DeLuca of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation said the department plans to memorialize the dead but has yet to decide how.

McKee knows this isn’t the last of the bones to resurface. Standing by as she watched the dogs in their daily digging ritual, she looked down at the concave patch of dirt they made. “There’s gotta be something here,” she said. “They can smell it.”

For further information, please see the following Web sites and books:
The New York Landmarks Conservancy

Around Washington Square: An illustrated history of Greenwich Village
by Luther S. Harris

It Happened on Washington Square by Emily Kies Folpe

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