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New York's first burial place unaffiliated with a house of worship
Place Details
Borough : Manhattan
Neighborhood : East Village
Place Matters Profile
Enclosed by surrounding buildings for more than 150 years is a rare, undisturbed physical vestige of an earlier era in New York City. The New York Marble Cemetery was the first burial place in the city that was unaffiliated with a church. Built in 1831, at a time of urban epidemic, the mid-block lot was also unique for its grid of underground vaults that took the place of traditional--and potentially contaminant--earthen burials. There is now an active movement to restore the cemetery and encourage its continued use by the many families that own a stake in it.
Gripped by dread of contagion, New York City outlawed earthen burials south of Canal Street in 1830. Outbreaks of yellow fever had been regular since the early 1700s, and cholera had recently hit the city, foreshadowing a historic epidemic in 1832. The solid marble walls around the bodies at the new Marble Cemetery would presumably prevent the leaching of microbes into the soil. Moreover,
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Enclosed by surrounding buildings for more than 150 years is a rare, undisturbed physical vestige of an earlier era in New York City. The New York Marble Cemetery was the first burial place in the city that was unaffiliated with a church. Built in 1831, at a time of urban epidemic, the mid-block lot was also unique for its grid of underground vaults that took the place of traditional--and potentially contaminant--earthen burials. There is now an active movement to restore the cemetery and encourage its continued use by the many families that own a stake in it.
Gripped by dread of contagion, New York City outlawed earthen burials south of Canal Street in 1830. Outbreaks of yellow fever had been regular since the early 1700s, and cholera had recently hit the city, foreshadowing a historic epidemic in 1832. The solid marble walls around the bodies at the new Marble Cemetery would presumably prevent the leaching of microbes into the soil. Moreover, a body could simply be inserted into its slot, instead of disturbing old burials, as was often necessary in overcrowded cemeteries elsewhere in town.
Non-sectarian, in-town vaults like the Marble Cemetery experienced a short wave of popularity in the 1830s. The neighborhood around the Bowery and close to Houston Street, then on the edge of the city, housed several such cemeteries--one other still exists, the New York City Marble Cemetery on Second Street (almost impossible to differentiate by name, it was built a year later because the first Marble Cemetery had filled immediately). During the 1840s and 50s, people continued to build similar private burial grounds in the area. There were also Methodist, Presbyterian, and Quaker burial places in the neighborhood, and an African Burial Ground on Chrystie Street. Since church ownership was simpler than ownership by a group of individuals, the sectarian burial grounds were easy to sell-off in later years. The complexity of the increasingly dispersed joint ownership of non-sectarian cemeteries is one of the reasons the Marble Cemetery is still intact.
By 1838, the rolling hills of Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn were created, heralding the end of in-town cemeteries and the march of the dead to the outer boroughs (family members even moved some of the remains here from the New York Marble Cemetery's vaults). Comparatively rural and landscaped cemeteries like Green-Wood and Woodlawn--also nonsectarian and non-profit--would be the future in eternal rest. New York State passed its Rural Cemeteries Act in 1847, a legal incentive to remove the dead from densely populated areas.
Filled to capacity, and soon obsolete as an innovation in burial, the Marble Cemetery slipped from the city's memory. It is not hard to see one reason why--the cemetery itself is hidden. A slender wrought-iron gate on Second Avenue provides hardly a glimpse of the green sanctuary in the middle of the block. And that grassy square itself indicates little of the vaults that lie beneath. The Marble Cemetery has no headstones--and only a handful of the marble plaques that lined the walls to name the occupants of the vaults remain intact.
Two thousand people were buried in the cemetery's 156 vaults from 1830 to 1937. The vaults were built in a one-story network, and share entrance shafts that are accessible by digging one and a half feet below ground. Each vault is arched and has slate doors. The marble used for the vaults, plaques, and lintels, is soft Tuckahoe marble that comes from Westchester County. It weathers badly, and has deteriorated where used above ground--notably, the walls and plaques.
The people buried in the Marble Cemetery were mostly middle- or upper-middle-class. A plaque on the walls read that the ground was a "place of interment for gentlemen." Families named Dey, Hoyt, Mott, and Varick were buried there. The vaults also housed the remains of art patron Luman Reed, philanthropist Anson G. Phelps, publisher Uriah Scribner, Mayor Aaron Clark, Congressman James Tallmadge and pioneer civil engineer Benjamin Wright. An overwhelming number of the remains were those of children.
Those buried in the cemetery did not necessarily come from established families. They might have used the cemetery because they did not have their own family burial ground or affiliation with an established church. Some of them were recent immigrants, and many were upwardly mobile. As the neighborhood changed in the 1850s, many of the families moved away. Over the years, descendants lost their ties to the neighborhood and the cemetery. Now, descendants are spread throughout 49 states.
At one point in the 1890s, reformer Jacob Riis expressed a desire to turn the cemetery into a park, but couldn't find a quorum of owners to approve the motion. In fact, the owners, all descendants of the people originally buried there, became widely dispersed. Only after a renaissance in 1997, when a volunteer discovered the decrepit state of the cemetery and began to contact descendants, did some of the possibly 200,000 part owners resurface. In 1997, caretakers knew of about 20 descendants. Now, about 2500 people have been located and are on record as descendants (the New-York Historical Society keeps the Marble Cemetery's records).
The remains that were once inside the vaults, most long unused, have largely disintegrated, and all descendants are welcome and encouraged to use the cemetery for burial. Becoming a working cemetery again is one of the ways that the landmark will be able to survive and complete the necessary stabilization and reconstruction of its walls. The cemetery opens its doors to the public a few times a year; one of these is All Souls' Day on November 2nd. After further restoration of crumbling walls and plaques, there will be opportunities for tours and school groups to visit.
Sources
Luo, Michael. "One-of-a-Kind Real Estate Deal For Eternal Rest in Manhattan." New York Times, November 7, 2003.
Neville, Chris. Interviewed by Marci Reaven for Place Matters. June, 2002.
"New York Marble Cemetery." Brochure.
"New York Marble Cemetery History." Brochure.
"New York Marble Cemetery Ownership and Restoration FAQs." Brochure.
