New York’s most famous park sits on top of a forgotten graveyard. This episode uncovers the lost potter’s fields, the city’s grim burial crisis, and the strange history lying just beneath the grass.
Episode Summary
Washington Square Park is one of the most recognizable public spaces in New York City — but its peaceful lawns and iconic arch hide a disturbing truth. Before it became a gathering place for artists, students, musicians, and protestors, this ground was a massive potter’s field where the city buried roughly 20,000 of its dead between the late 1700s and early 1800s.
New York was growing fast, disease was spreading even faster, and the city needed somewhere — anywhere — to place the bodies of its poor, its unknown, and its forgotten. Coffins were stacked in mass graves, trenches were filled overnight, and in some cases, burial pits were dug just feet from the surface. When the city expanded northward, officials simply covered the graves and repurposed the land.
Over the next two centuries, workers, historians, and construction crews repeatedly stumbled upon human remains beneath the park. Bones, coffins, and intact burial vaults have surfaced as recently as the 2010s. This episode explores why the graves were forgotten, how they were rediscovered, and what the park’s history reveals about the city’s uneasy relationship with its dead.
Quick Facts
- Location: Washington Square Park, Manhattan, New York
- Era: Approx. 1797–1825 (Potter’s Field period)
- Estimated Burials: ~20,000
- Notable Elements: Execution grounds, yellow fever burial trenches, mass graves
- Rediscoveries: Bones found during park renovations in 1890s, 1960s, 2015
- Episode Runtime: 4:23
- Primary Sources:
- New York City Municipal Archives
- Historic New York newspapers (via Newspapers.com)
- NYC Parks Department historical reports
- Archaeological findings published during 2015 renovation
Behind the Story
Filming in New York, I walked the exact ground where the potter’s fields once stretched across what is now the park’s northern end. The contrast is surreal — picnics and guitar players above, burial trenches and forgotten vaults below. Washington Square is a perfect example of how cities bury their past, both literally and figuratively, and how history always finds a way back to the surface.
Credits & Sources
- Municipal historical documents courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives
- Historic newspaper records via Newspapers.com
- Archaeological reporting from the NYC Parks Department
- All images and archival material belong to their respective owners
- Modern footage shot on location in New York City
- Stock video licensed through Envato Elements
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