THE 2nd Shearith Israel Cemetery on West 11th Street near 6th Avenue (described on this FNY page) isn’t the only “deactivated” cemetery on 11th Street. I recently found out about another one, but only its ancient wall marks its presence today. In 1833, the cemetery at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral at Mott and Prince Streets was full up, and the Catholic diocese purchased several acres of territory east of 1st Avenue between East 11th and 12th Streets.
Funeral directors and headstone carvers rarely go out of business, and by 1848 the 11th Street cemetery was full up as well after over 40,000 burials, and the diocese purchased a much larger tract in the wide open spaces of Blissville, which became Calvary Cemetery. The burials kept coming and two more tracts were acquired in subsequent decades until Calvary reached its current size: today, three million have permanent residency there, more than Queens’ live population.
In 1883 the diocese proposed selling the property which meant that the interments would have to be moved elsewhere. By then the cemetery had not been maintained at all and in the sad story of so many other ancient cemeteries around town, it was a disgraceful ruin. Families of the interred tied up the removal of the interments for decades, however, and it wasn’t until 1909 that the grim work was even begun. Even then, only 5,000 (at best) of the deceased were moved to Calvary Cemetery in Queens. The other 35,000 may still be beneath 11th Street.
In the early 20th Century, the disused cemetery, no basically an empty lot, became home to hooligans and gangs such as Humpty Jackson’s infamous crew. Today, East Side Community High School, Open Road Park (Lower East Side Playground), and Madina Masjid sit on 11th Street today.
Amazingly, a bricked portion of the cemetery’s western wall can still be seen from Open Road Park.
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2/24/24
2 comments
Open Road Park has been renamed Lower East Side Playground.
The property boundaries in the interior of the blocks to the north of the cemetery show an east-west line that runs diagonal to the street grid. This might be an interesting subject for a future FNY page, if one does not already exist. If you walk around the neighborhood and peer over the cornices you can see back buildings whose walls follow this line. I’m thinking of the block between 12th and 13th and First and A. This diagonal lines up with Stuyvesant Street, which I seem to recall is the only existing street in an alternative Manhattan street grid that would have had all the streets oriented exactly east and west. Another such diagonal property line is visible from 12th St. just west of First Ave. If you look south and west into the school playground, you can see a fenced-off backyard of a building adjacent to the schoolyard that is also aligned along this diagonal.