West Eleventh Street Cemetery
Completion 2022
New York, NY
By 1800, Congregation Shearith Israel found itself in need of additional burial ground not only for the growing Jewish population but in consideration of the possibility of a pandemic that might exceed the capacity of the well-established Chatham Square Cemetery in Lower Manhattan. Soon after, in 1804, the congregation purchased two adjacent lots, each 25 feet wide by 100 feet long on the south side of Milligan Street. The following year, the ground was dedicated as Beth Haim Shenee (Second Cemetery) and shortly thereafter the sole grave of Wolfe Pollock, a victim of yellow fever, was transferred to it from the short-lived 13th Street Cemetery. With that interment, the cemetery became supplemental to the old graveyard at Chatham Square. At first, the cemetery primarily received strangers and newcomers who had neither family ties with nor sentimental attachment to Chatham Square. But by 1823, when the City issued an ordinance forbidding burial south of Canal Street, Beth Haim Shenee became the only active burial ground of the community.
By 1830, the city would open and extend 11th Street and convey the entire cemetery. However, at the midnight hour, the congregation succeeded in getting the city to re-convey the portion of the cemetery that fell outside of the expansion of the new street. The result would preserve a fragmentary triangle of burial ground and those graves that laid outside of it were transposed into it.
Newly extended 11th Street was built at a higher elevation than the residual cemetery, thus necessitating the augmentation of earth to bring the cemetery level up to it, thereby making the extant graves unusually deep.
In late 1830, as 11th Street came barreling west, the congregation retained A. P. Mayber to construct a stone foundation and brick wall around the now triangular cemetery fronting 11th Street. Those walls, utilitarian in design and hastily constructed, over time received alterations and repairs.
Today, the cemetery is at the crossroads of the old Greenwich Village grid and the new Manhattan one, located within the Greenwich Village Historic District.
In 2015 Congregation Shearith Israel hired us to conserve their cemetery. One of the first things we observed at the cemetery was the pedestrian who stopped and either stood on her tip toes to peer over the wall or pressed his nose to the narrow gate to try to get a good look in. The curiosity was palatable but unfortunately mostly went unsatisfied.
After researching the history of the site and creating existing condition drawings for the cemetery, we investigated the walls and discovered that the brick street wall extended one foot below the sidewalk and rested on a stone foundation wall of an unknown depth but deeper than our 5’ test pit. The portion of brick wall below grade was in poor condition with loose brick and heavily deteriorated mortar. The brick wall above grade, covered by a cementitious coating, was soft, due to years of trapped water freezing and thawing between it and the cementitious coating.
During the design phase of our work, in 2019, a vehicular accident further compromised the already unstable street wall which decisively led to its demolition. The demolition allowed us to examine the stone foundation and where necessary, fill the voids to fortify it. We designed a new brick wall on top of the fortified stone foundation. The interior walls were in better condition and for those we proposed repair.
The American elm tree, self-seeded, not intentionally planted, is not only rare in its resistance to Dutch elm disease but growing vigorously and arching out considerably over 11th Street. However, the base of the trunk came within one inch of the capstone of the existing wall. While it did not appear that its roots were causing any bowing or deformation of the wall, as the tree continued to grow, its trunk would begin to impact the capstone of the street wall and eventually grow into the wall. Therefore, at the American elm, we proposed curving the new brick wall away from it to conserve and accommodate it.
The curve allows the ever-growing tree and the cemetery to continue to coexist. It also provides a wide and welcome window into the cemetery, without compromising the security of the sacred site. If you look closely, you can see a scar in the tree trunk where it once abutted the capstone of the old street wall.
For the historic iron fencing and gate, we proposed restoration and reinstallation with new matching iron work at the new curve in the wall, and a masonry pier at the end to bracket the curve.
Long ago, some of the grave markers were attached to the brick walls. We took them down and installed them back in the ground, 12” away from the wall.
One could argue that nothing is more characteristic of New York than the chance encounter. So, just as we preserved the cemetery’s historic stone foundation, interior walls, iron work and monuments, we also conserved the fortuitous: a vigorous self-seeded American elm and a remnant gore of burial ground. Furthermore, we created a window into their synergy. The NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, at Public Hearing, unanimously and with great enthusiasm approved our design.
Collaborators: Jablonski Building Conservation, Old Structures Engineers, Urban Arborists, Support For Architects, and West New York Restoration.