Cemetery of the Evergreens

History

The Evergreens was built on the principle of the rural cemetery. Two of the era's most noted landscape architects, Andrew Jackson Downing and Alexander Jackson Davis, were instrumental in the layout of the cemetery grounds.

The Evergreens has a monument to six victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of March 25, 1911 who were unidentified for nearly a century. In 2011, Michael Hirsch, a historian, completed four years of research that identified these victims by name (see ).

There are also seventeen British Commonwealth service personnel buried in the cemetery: thirteen from World War I and four from World War II.

The cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 15, 2007.

Notable burials

Individual graves

• John Bunny (1863–1915), actor
• George C. Bennett (1824–1885), newspaper publisher and New York State assemblyman
• Albert Levi Burt (1843–1913), eponymous founder of the publisher A. L. Burt
• Anthony Comstock (1844–1915), censor (see Comstock Law)
• William C. Cooper (1853–1918), silent-film actor
• Edward Copland (1793–1859), mayor of Brooklyn
• Bill Dahlen (1870–1950), Major League Baseball player, one of the outstanding early 20th century players. Lies in an unmarked grave
• James E. Davis (1962–2003), New York City councilman (he was originally interred in Green-Wood Cemetery, but after it was realized that his assassin was also interred there, he was moved to the Cemetery of the Evergreens)
• Thomas Dilward (1817–1887), Minstrel performer credited with having invented the word "hunky-dory"
• George Henry Ellis (1875–1898), A chief yeoman on the USS Brooklyn
• Alice Fleming (1882–1952), actress, stage and screen
• Effie Germon (1845–1914), Stage actress descended from the Germons of Baltimore, an old theatrical family
• Adelaide Hall (1901–1993), singer, actress, dancer, nightclub chanteuse
• George Hall (1849–1923), Major League Baseball player, banned from baseball for life
• Yusef Hawkins (1973–1989), murder victim
• Martin Johnson Heade (1819–1904), artist
• Lucille Hegamin (1894–1970), singer, female pioneer of the Blues
• Nelson H. Henry (1855–1923), member of the New York State Assembly, Adjutant General of New York
• William Hickey (1927–1997), actor
• Martin Hildebrandt (1825–1890), early tattoo artist
• Fanny Janauschek (1829–1904), Czech-born stage actress
• Ernest A. Janson (1878–1930) highly decorated United States Marine, earned two Medals of Honor for his heroic actions in World War I
• Joseph Forsyth Johnson (1840–1906), landscape architect and great-grandfather of Bruce Forsyth
• George H. Lindsay (1837–1916), congressman
  • George W. Lindsay (1865–1938), congressman, his son
• Winsor McCay (1872–1934), cartoonist and animated cartoon pioneer
• Antonio "Tony" Pastor (1837–1908), vaudevillian
• Charles A. Read (1837–1865), American Civil War Medal of Honor recipient
• Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (1878–1949), tap dancer
• Stephen A. Rudd (1874–1936), congressman
• Assotto Saint (1947–1994), poet, publisher and performance artist
• Joseph Thuma Schenck (c. 1891–1930), vaudevillian, better known as "Joe" Schenck, of the comedy singing team Van and Schenck
• Gardiner Spring (1785–1873), American minister and author
• William Steinitz (1836–1900), world chess champion
• Bob Thiele (1922–1996), record producer
• Amy Vanderbilt (1908–1974), journalist, etiquette authority
• Oscar Walker (1854–1889), Major League Baseball player
• John William Warde (c. 1912–1938), his widely publicized suicide inspired the movie Fourteen Hours.
• Horace Weston (1825–1890), banjo player
• Thomas "Blind Tom" Wiggins (1849–1908), musician
• Lester Young (1909–1959), jazz musician

Group monument

• Triangle Shirtwaist fire – the bodies of six victims of the 1911 fire to be identified were buried under a monument of a kneeling woman. They could not be identified after the inferno because they were burned beyond recognition, and had been buried without names. A century after the tragedy, in 2011, they were identified by historian Michael Hirsch as Maria Giuseppa Lauletti, Max Florin, Concetta Prestifilippo, Josephine Cammarata, Dora Evans, and Fannie Rosen.

References

References

1. {{NRISref
2. (2007). "Silent City on a Hill: Picturesque Landscapes of Memory and Boston's Mount Auburn Cemetery". University of Massachusetts Press.
3. Kathleen A. Howe. (August 2007). "National Register of Historic Places Registration: New York SP Evergreens Cemetery". National Archives and Records Administration.
4. (February 21, 2011). "100 Years Later, the Roll of the Dead in a Factory Fire Is Complete". New York Times.
5. (February 22, 2011). "The Fire That Changed Everything". The New York Times.
6. "New York City Brooklyn (The Evergreens) Cemetery".
7. Barron, James. (2025-05-09). "Stargazing in a Cemetery, Where It's Dark and Quiet". The New York Times.
8. (20 June 1859). "Deaths: Edward Copland". Brooklyn Evening Star.
9. (1884). "The Civil, Political, Professional and Ecclesiastical History, and Commercial and Industrial Record of the County of Kings and the City of Brooklyn, N. Y. from 1683 to 1884". W. W. Munsell & Co..
10. Kuntz, Andrew. (May 24, 2012). "Fiddle Tune History – Minstrel Tales: Picayune Butler and Japanese Tommy 'Hunky Dory!'". Fiddler Magazine.
11. (19 March 1923). "Gen. N. H. Henry Buried In Evergreen Cemetery". [[Brooklyn Standard Union]].
12. (February 21, 2011). "In Records, Portraits of Lives Cut Short". The New York Times.