How 20,000 bodies were buried in a mass grave under New York's popular park

Washington Square is considered one of New York's liveliest parks, but beneath the 10 acres of cobblestone hangouts and lush greenery lie the bodies of 20,000 people< /p>

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Washington Square Park: remains discovered in 2015

Beneath the grounds of one of America's most popular parks is a mass grave where authorities dumped the corpses of tens of thousands of poor and sick New Yorkers.

Washington Square is considered one of the busiest parks in the city, popular with college students and dog walkers, but beneath its 10 acres lie the bodies of 20,000 people.

Research librarian Carmen Nigro wrote about the morbid secrecy in a blog post for the New York Public Library.

She said, "What lies beneath this beautiful, newly remodeled and renovated outdoor sanctuary is a bit more morbid."

Before being a park, two-thirds of Washington Square was a pauper's grave, where unidentified and unclaimed bodies were buried.

New York City bought the land in 1820 for just $4,500 to deal with rising deaths from a series of yellow fever epidemics, according to reports.

The park in Lower Manhattan is popular among tourists and locals (

Picture:

Getty Images/iStockphoto)

The city originally planned to bury only 5,000 bodies in the park, but when four epidemics raged through the city between 1797 and 1803, they had to quadruple the capacity.

The disease initially causes fever, chills, vomiting and muscle aches before progressing to more severe symptoms. These include yellowing of the skin and eyeballs, vomiting black bile, and organ failure.

About 60% of people infected with the disease will die.