Queens Residents Celebrate As Brinckerhoff Cemetery Achieves Landmark Status
Imagine living in a home built right on top of a
cemetery.
People in Queens said that allowing a developer to build
there would have been a grave injustice, but on Tuesday night they’re
celebrating a landmark victory.
On a street of tidy homes, a messy lot is choked by
weeds, but it’s also chockfull of history. There are graves dating back to
1730.
“We thought it was an Indian cemetery,” one local told
CBS 2′s Tony Aiello. “As a child, we’d come here at Halloween and kids were
frightened by it!”
Fresh Meadows residents have been fighting for years to
preserve the Brinckerhoff Cemetery, where ancestors of some of the first Dutch
settlers of Queens were buried.
The city did a survey back in 1919 and found more than 70
gravestones in the Brinckerhoff Cemetery, because people often were buried two
or three to a grave.
It could be the final resting place of more than 200
people.
Decades ago the city mistakenly opened the cemetery land
for possible development. But on Tuesday, a city commission landmarked the
property, putting a stake through a developer’s plan to build houses there.
“This is a victory for our community, and we just want to
say that our history is not for sale,” James Gallagher of the FMHA said.
In Queens, history is sometimes allowed to decay.
The RKO Keith’s Theatre in Flushing and the Civic Virtue
Statue at Borough Hall both are crumbling.
Queens is a borough of immigrants, the majority of whom
are focused on building a future. But the Brinckerhoff battle inspired a number
of immigrants to act to protect the past.
“I go through the same thing about preservation of my
ancestry, so I know the significance of this,” Ashook Ramsaran, a Guyanese
immigrant, said.
“You have to recognize that this is an heirloom that is
handed to us, and we deserve to respect it whether you are an immigrant or
not,” Yoland De La Cruz, and immigrant
of the Philippines, agreed.
With landmark status achieved, residents will now work to
acquire the cemetery and restore it.
Council Member James Gennaro said that the historic site
is important enough that the city should provide non-profit funds to buy it.
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