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THEY PUT THE GRAVE IN GRAVESEND: Conservationists worked together to restore graves in the Old
Gravesend Cemetery, which was founded in 1643. Photo by Trey Pentecost
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BY ROSE ADAMS
Preservationists labored to restore
fallen graves in the city’s
oldest surviving burial ground
on Wednesday.
The Old Gravesend Cemetery
— located on Village Road
South and Van Sicklen Street
— was founded in 1643 by Lady
Deborah Moody, a Quaker who
obtained a land grant from the
Dutch to establish Gravesend,
which she named after her
English hometown. The fi rst
woman to found a colonial village
in North America, Moody
built a modern utopia. She designed
her town using a revolutionary,
orthogonal street grid,
and hoped the village would
become the capital of an English
providence, according to a
JSTOR Daily report .
But all that remains of the
early settlement is the Old
Gravesend Cemetery. Under
its stately trees lie early settlers,
Revolutionary War veterans,
as well as hundreds of
residents who lived in the area
up until the 1940s. Many of the
cemetery’s earliest graves are
gone — probably because they
were wooden — and the remaining
350 stones are in desperate
need of repair, according
to preservationists.
“Many of the stones had
been toppled,” said John Saunders,
a monument conservation
manager for the Parks
Department.
Saunders, interns from the
Parks Department, Greenwood
Cemetery staff, and several
high school students worked
together on Wednesday to install
new foundations for the
graves, hoisting the stones up,
cleaning them, and planting
greenery to restore the graveyard
to its former glory.
“All those people there at
one time brought a lot of energy
to the project,” Saunders
added.
The workers were able to reinstall
60 toppled graves over
the course of the day.
From June until mid-August,
two full-time Parks
Department employees are
working daily to restore the
cemetery — which is currently
closed to the public. The graveyard
is too fragile to be open
full time, but after its maintenance,
the city hopes to open
the space to special groups.
“It is the goal of the Parks
Department to make it more
available to school groups,”
said Jonathan Kuhn, the Director
of Arts and Antiquities
at the Parks Department.
With a restored, historic
graveyard, conservationists
hope more New Yorkers will
visit the otherworldly site.
“It’s very bucolic,” said
Kuhn of the area. “There are
auto body shops and then lush
trees. It’s a rural landscape,
but you’re still in Brooklyn,”
he said.
Drop-dead
gorgeous
Conservationists team up to clean
graves at Old Gravesend Cemetery
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