Calvary Cemetery is a Catholic cemetery located in Maspeth and Woodside, Queens, New York City, New York, United States. It has more interments than any other cemetery in the United States, with more than three million burials.
Established in 1848, Calvary Cemetery spans 365 acres. It owned by the Archdiocese of New York and managed by the Trustees of St. Patrick's Cathedral.
Calvary Cemetery is divided into four sections[1]. The oldest section, First Calvary, is also called "Old Calvary". The Second, Third, and Fourth sections are all considered part of "New Calvary". The Old Calvary section of the cemetery is also a public park owned by the city, called Calvary Veterans Park.
Calvary Cemetery is known for its dramatic setting—a huge necropolis enveloped into the heart of the city. Rows of gravestones are surrounded by highways, businesses, and notorious buildings such as the Empire State Building and the United Nations headquarters.
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History of Calvary Cemetery
In the early 1800s, most burials were conducted in churchyards, which were rapidly overflowing with the dead as New York City’s population grew. Outbreaks of yellow fever and cholera led to hasty burials. The festering gravesites at the city center caused even more disease.
The Trustees of Old St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan, acknowledged that their Mulberry Street cemetery was reaching full capacity by 1817 so they began to explore options to expand.
The 1832 outbreak of cholera resulted in the deaths of 3,500 residents. Another 80,000 people fled the city, roughly a third of the population at the time.
Following the 1847 cholera epidemic, the New York State Legislature passed the Rural Cemetery Act which authorized nonprofit corporations to operate commercial cemeteries. The Trustees of Old St. Patrick's Cathedral[2] has just purchased another 71 acres of land in 1845 and it was used to establish Calvary Cemetery.
The first burial at Calvary Cemetery took place on July 31, 1848. The deceased was Esther Ennis, who supposedly "died of a broken heart". The cemetery was dedicated by Archbishop John Hughes in August of 1848.
By 1852, there were 50 burials a day. More than half of those burials were poverty-stricken Irish children under the age of seven[3], many of whom had come to America with their families as a result of the Irish Potato Famine.
In the early 1900s, epidemics of influenza and tuberculosis caused a shortage of grave diggers[4] so many family members began digging graves for their own loved ones. In 1907, there were approximately 850,000 burials at Calvary Cemetery.
By the 1990s, there were nearly 3 million burials in Calvary Cemetery. The cemetery continues to add gravesites that can be purchased prior to death.
It originally cost seven dollars[5] for an adult to be buried at Mount Calvary Cemetery. Children under age seven could be buried for three dollars and children age seven to fourteen cost five dollars.
Description
When Calvary Cemetery was first established, Queens was still mostly made up of farms and villages, so establishing a rural cemetery was a logical choice. It was patterned after the park-like settings at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn and Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.
Calvary Cemetery's chapel was originally a wooden framed building. In 1908, it was rebuilt using limestone. The chapel is named after St. Callixtus. It was designed by Raymond F. Almirall and blessed by Archbishop John Farley. The chapel's unique design features bas relief carvings over the doorways, a granite statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and a domed roof.
Today, there are four sections in the cemetery, each named after a catacomb in Rome, Italy:
- First Calvary is Saint Callixtus
- Second Calvary is Saint Agnes
- Third Calvary is Saint Sebastian
- Fourth Calvary is Saint Domitilla
In 1847, ferryboats[6] began taking passengers who were on foot or in horse-drawn carriages from 23rd Street across the East River. By 1854, another ferry service opened near 10th Street.
Today, Calvary is not such a peaceful place[7] due to the heavy traffic and dense population in the area. The cemetery is sandwiched between the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the Long Island Expressway. It is also near the heavily polluted Newtown Creek.
Many tourists and taphophiles make visits to Calvary Cemetery to explore and document Catholic gravestone symbols.
Catholic Gravestone Symbols
Calvary Cemetery is filled with monuments with classic Catholic gravestone symbols[8][9].
Some of them include:
Notable burials at Calvary Cemetery
- Alfred E. Smith (1873–1944), New York Governor and 1928 Presidential Candidate
- Robert F. Wagner (1877–1953), United States Senator
- Annie Moore Schayer (1874–1924), First person to be processed thru Ellis Island
- Tony Bennett (1926–2023), American jazz and pop singer with 20 Grammy awards
- Edward Brown, Jr. (1841–1911), American Civil War Medal of Honor recipient
Explore more about famous cemeteries
- Documenting Cemeteries with BillionGraves, Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Cemetery Records Worldwide, BillionGraves, MyHeritage Catalog Collection
- The Seven Largest Cemeteries in the World, BillionGraves Blog
- Three Amazing Cemeteries, BillionGraves Blog
- London's Magnificent Seven Cemeteries, BillionGraves Blog
- 10 Cemeteries to See Before You Die, BillionGraves Blog
- 10 of the World's Most Beautiful Cemeteries, BillionGraves Blog
- Stories in Stone – Cemetery Research, Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Catholic Cemetery Symbols, BillionGraves Blog
- 10 Catholic Gravestone Symbols, BillionGraves Blog
References
- ↑ "Calvary Cemetery". Calvary & Allied NYC. Retrieved 2024-08-06.
- ↑ "Calvary Cemetery". Calvary & Allied NYC. Retrieved 2024-08-06.
- ↑ Posted by Geoffrey Cobb on March 2, 2021 at 9:00pm; Blog, View. "Calvary Cemetery -- Historic Resting Place of the New York Irish". thewildgeese.irish. Retrieved 2024-08-06.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ↑ Posted by Geoffrey Cobb on March 2, 2021 at 9:00pm; Blog, View. "Calvary Cemetery -- Historic Resting Place of the New York Irish". thewildgeese.irish. Retrieved 2024-08-06.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ↑ "New York City, Calvary Cemetery". timenote.info (in latviešu). Retrieved 2024-08-06.
- ↑ "Calvary Cemetery". Atlas Obscura. Retrieved 2024-08-06.
- ↑ "Calvary Cemetery". Atlas Obscura. Retrieved 2024-08-06.
- ↑ https://blog.billiongraves.com/catholic-gravestone-symbols-part-ii/
- ↑ Wallace, Cathy (2019-11-19). "10 Catholic Gravestone Symbols". BillionGraves Blog. Retrieved 2024-08-06.