New York cemeteries are running out of space.
Where will New Yorkers find their six-feet under?
Some of the more elusive pieces of property in real-estate-crazed New York City are simple, narrow plots of land -- six feet underground.
The city’s cemeteries are running out of space, making graveplots hard to come by. Almost 325 graveyards have operated in this city at some time or another, but only 75 are open currently, according to the state’s Division of Cemeteries, as cited in a Gotham Gazette article last year. That number is rapidly falling.
In a month Washington Cemetery, in Brooklyn, will be full. Green-Wood Cemetery, also in King’s County, has enough space to accommodate underground burials for only five more years. Many cemeteries might already be closed if not for the increasing popularity of cremation.
But for those who do want to be buried, limited space in New York City graveyards means they will have to buy plots across the river in New Jersey or in Westchester County.
“Lifelong New Yorkers who might eschew the suburbs may be exiled there for eternity,” said Richard Moylan, president of the Metropolitan Cemetery Association and also Green-Wood.
It would be easy if cemeteries could simply acquire more land. But in a crowded city like New York, space is at a premium. Getting new land -- and taking property off the tax rolls -- is an arduous process and requires City Council approval, Moylan said.
If a cemetery can’t get more land, the only means of increasing burial space is to build above-ground mausoleums, if they have room, or to find scraps of land among existing graves. Thanks to a bill passed in 2003 by the State Assembly, cemeteries can now reclaim abandoned plots, which will give some of them a little more room.
Even if a cemetery has unused land within its borders, it can be difficult to convert that property into burial space.
At Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, for example, land that’s used for maintenance can’t suddenly turn into new plots because the cemetery’s founding charter forbids it, said the cemetery’s historian, Susan Olson.
So cemeteries have been building up. To combat the problem of diminishing plots, cemeteries like Woodlawn, Green-Wood and The Evergreens Cemetery, in Brooklyn, have built community mausoleums.
“It looks to be the thing of the future,” said Anthony Salamone, the assistant superintendent at The Evergreens. There isn’t any underground space at The Evergreens right now, but there’s still room in the mausoleum.
The situation today might be more dire at many cemeteries around the city if not for the increasing popularity of cremations. In 2003 just over 23 percent of those who died in New York state chose to be cremated, a 15 percent increase from 1999, according to data from the Cremation Association of North America.
By 2010 the percentage of those who are cremated in New York state is expected to jump to almost 30 percent.
The price of housing an urn is also cheaper. To be entombed in the community mausoleum at Green-Wood costs between $6,700 and $27,800. A 756-square foot mausoleum site starts at $160,000. Giving eternal resting place to an urn, on the other hand, runs from $2,250.
More cremations mean fewer people who need underground plots. Because of the “huge rise” in cremations at Woodlawn, Olson said, the cemetery has enough burial plots for the next 50 years.
Woodlawn might even be able to stretch their space farther, if cremation becomes even more popular.
“Fifty years from now, what will people be doing?” Olson asked. “Why acquire space if nobody’s going to be burying anymore?” |
