Cemetery of the Evergreens

Historic cemetery in New York, United States

United States historic place

The Evergreens Cemetery

U.S. National Register of Historic Places

Southern (Bushwick Avenue) entrance

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Location| 1629 Bushwick Ave., Brooklyn, New York
Coordinates| 40°41′2.0″N 73°54′4.3″W﻿ / ﻿40.683889°N 73.901194°W﻿ / 40.683889; -73.901194
Area| 225 acres (91 ha)
Built| 1849
Architect| Vaux, Calvert; etc
NRHP reference No.| 07001192[1]
Added to NRHP| November 15, 2007

The Cemetery of the Evergreens, also called The Evergreens Cemetery, is a non-denominational rural cemetery[2] along the Cemetery Belt in Brooklyn and Queens, New York City. It was incorporated in 1849, not long after the passage of New York's Rural Cemetery Act spurred development of cemeteries outside Manhattan. For a time, it was the busiest cemetery in New York City; in 1929 there were 4,673 interments. Today, the Evergreens is the final resting place of more than 526,000 people.[3]

The cemetery borders Brooklyn and Queens and covers 225 acres (0.91 km2) of rolling hills and gently sloping meadows. It features several thousand trees and flowering shrubs in a park-like setting. Cypress Hills Cemetery lies to its northeast.

## History

[edit]

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 § Group monument).[4][5]

There are also seventeen British Commonwealth service personnel buried in the cemetery: thirteen from World War I and four from World War II.[6]

The cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 15, 2007.[1]

## Notable burials

[edit]

### Individual graves

[edit]

Adelaide Hall's grave at Cemetery of the Evergreens

* 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
* 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"[7]
* 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
* John D. Germon (1840–1901), Stage actor descended from the Germons of Baltimore, an old theatrical family; brother of Effie Germon
* 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[8]
* 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
* Julia Smitten Reinhardt (1844–1924), stage actress and suffragist
* Sante Righini (1883–1912), died on the Titanic[9]
* 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

[edit]

* 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.[5][10]

## See also

[edit]

* List of United States cemeteries

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b "National Register Information System – (#07001192)". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
2. ^ Linden, Blanche M.G. (2007). Silent City on a Hill: Picturesque Landscapes of Memory and Boston's Mount Auburn Cemetery. Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press. p. 295\. ISBN 978-1558495715. Retrieved September 15, 2019.
3. ^ "Cultural Resource Information System (CRIS)". New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Archived from the original (Searchable database) on April 4, 2019. Retrieved May 1, 2016. Note: This includes Kathleen A. Howe (August 2007). "National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Evergreens Cemetery" (PDF). Retrieved May 1, 2016. and Accompanying 26 photographs
4. ^ Berger, Joseph (February 21, 2011). "100 Years Later, the Roll of the Dead in a Factory Fire Is Complete". New York Times. p. 13. Retrieved April 23, 2017.
5. ^ a b "The Fire That Changed Everything". The New York Times. February 22, 2011. Retrieved November 4, 2011.
6. ^ "New York City Brooklyn (The Evergreens) Cemetery". Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Breakdown obtained from casualty record.
7. ^ Kuntz, Andrew (May 24, 2012). "Fiddle Tune History – Minstrel Tales: Picayune Butler and Japanese Tommy 'Hunky Dory!'". Fiddler Magazine. Archived from the original on March 10, 2014.
8. ^ "Gen. N. H. Henry Buried In Evergreen Cemetery". Brooklyn Standard Union. Brooklyn, New York. March 19, 1923. p. 15 - via Newspapers.com.
9. ^ Schapiro, Rich; Egan-Chin, Debbie (April 11, 2017). "Hunt for Grave of Heroic Titanic Victim Leads Researcher to Brooklyn Cemetery". New York Daily News. Retrieved April 11, 2017.
10. ^ Berger, Joseph (February 21, 2011). "In Records, Portraits of Lives Cut Short". The New York Times. p. A16. Retrieved April 23, 2017.

## Further reading

[edit]

* Rousmaniere, John. Green Oasis in Brooklyn: The Evergreens Cemetery 1849–2008. (2008) ISBN 978-0978689940

## External links

[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cemetery of the Evergreens.

* The Evergreens Cemetery official home page
* Cemetery of the Evergreens at Find a Grave

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