New York City Marble Cemetery

History and description

In 1830, recent outbreaks of yellow fever had led city residents to fear burying their dead in coffins just a few feet below ground, and public health legislation had outlawed earthen burials. The New York Marble Cemetery had met this circumstance by constructing and selling underground marble burial vaults. A year later, five partners – Evert Bancker, Henry Booraem, Thomas Addis Emmett, Garret Storm and Samuel Whittemore – organized a similar venture one block east.

Land was purchased from Samuel Cowdrey, who was a vault owner in the earlier venture, and Perkins Nichols was engaged to construct the marble vaults, as he had done previously. The first of the vaults were ready by summer 1831, the cemetery was incorporated on April 26, 1832, and it continued to purchase land on either side of the original plot until 1835, when it reached its current dimensions.

Unlike the earlier cemetery, in which no monuments or markers indicated the placement of the vaults, instead being indicated on marble tablet embedded in the surrounding wall, the new cemetery marked the position of each vault with a marble marker, or with monuments of various sizes, according to the vault owner's preference. At the time, the new cemetery was considered to be a fashionable place to be buried.

Visiting

According to the cemetery's website, it is open twice a year, on a Sunday in spring, and a weekend in the fall.

Notable burials

• Stephen Allen, mayor of New York City and New York State Senator.
• Preserved Fish, a noted merchant
• David Sherwood Jackson, Congressman (1847–1849)
• James Lenox, co-Founder of the New York Public Library and founder of Presbyterian Hospital
• Edward Elmer Potter, Civil War Brigadier General
• James Henry Roosevelt, founder of Roosevelt Hospital, and other members of his branch of the Roosevelt family
• John Lloyd Stephens, archaeologist who was a pioneer in the study of Mayan culture
• Moses Taylor, financier and backer of the Atlantic Cable
• Isaac Varian, mayor of New York City (1839–1841)
• Marinus Willett, hero of the Revolutionary War and Mayor of New York City (1807–1808)

The remains from the churchyard of the South Dutch Church were moved to the cemetery, which also contains the remains of the Kip family, after whom Kips Bay is named. Cemetery tradition holds the bones of the first European men to be buried on Manhattan island, the Dutch dominies, were moved to the "Ministers' Vault".

;Former burials

• John Ericsson, designer of , whose remains were subsequently moved to Sweden in 1890
• James Monroe, president of the United States, whose remains were subsequently moved to Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia in 1858

References

Notes

References

1. {{NRISref. 2007a
2. Holly Huckins, Joan R. Olshansky, and Elizabeth Spencer-Ralph. (December 1979). "National Register of Historic Places Registration: New York SP New York City Marble Cemetery". National Archives and Records Administration.
3. Stateman, Alison. (August 31, 2003). "A Cemetery for the Living". [[The New York Times]].
4. {{cite nycland, p.68
5. Kelley, Tina. (May 22, 2000). "Marble Walls, Roomy, But No Place to Live; Descendants Inherit a Cemetery Filled With History, but in Disrepair". [[The New York Times]].
6. "NYCLPC Designation Report".
7. "Events". New York City Marble Cemetery.
8. "Interments Listed by Name". New York City Marble Cemetery.
9. Stateman, Alison. (August 31, 2003). "A Cemetery for the Living". The New York Times.