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. Shortly thereafter, in 1804, the trustees of the congregation purchased two adjacent lots, each roughly 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 Thirteenth 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. The cemetery is at the crossroads of the old Greenwich Village grid and the new Manhattan one.
By 1830, the City would open and extend Eleventh 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 leave a fragmentary triangle of burial ground and those graves that laid outside of it were transposed into it.
Newly extended Eleventh 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 Eleventh Street came barreling west, the Congregation retained A. P. Mayber to construct a stone foundation and brick wall around the now triangular cemetery fronting on 11th Street.
Those walls, utilitarian in design and hastily constructed, had been altered and repaired over time.
One of the first things I 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 gate to try to get a good look in. The curiosity was palatable but unfortunately mostly went unsatisfied.
In 2015 Congregation Shearith Israel hired us to conserve their cemetery which is located within the Greenwich Village Historic District. After researching the history of the site and creating precise existing conditions drawings for the cemetery including its grave markers, we investigated the walls and discovered that the brick street wall extended about one foot below the sidewalk and rested on a stone foundation wall which continued down deeper than five feet which was the depth of our test pit. We found the one foot of brick wall below grade in poor condition with loose brick and heavily deteriorated mortar. The brick wall above grade, covered by a cementitious coating, was soft, due to the freezing and thawing of water trapped between it and the cementitious coating.
The vehicular accident of 2019 further compromised the street wall. The interior walls were in better condition for which we proposed repair. For the street wall, we proposed dismantling the brick portion above the stone foundation and then partially exposing the stone foundation to examine it for soundness. Where necessary, voids in the stone foundation were filled. We proposed a new brick wall which was built on top of the existing fortified stone foundation.
At the American Elm tree, we proposed curving away from it to accommodate it. This American Elm tree, self-seeded, not intentionally planted, is not only rare in its resistance to Dutch elm disease but has been growing vigorously. It now arches out considerably over 11 th Street. 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 it would continue to grow, the tree would begin to impact the capstone of the wall and eventually grow into the wall and its roots could cause instability in the stone foundation.
Our 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.
We proposed restoration and reinstallation of the historic iron fencing and gate, new matching iron work at the new curve in the wall, and a masonry pier at the end of the new wall to bracket the curve.
One could argue that nothing is more characteristic of New York than the chance encounter. So, just as important as the preservation of the cemetery’s historic stone foundation, interior walls, and iron work we also conserved the fortuitous: a vigorous self-seeded American elm and a remnant gore of burial ground, along with a window into their synergy. The NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, at Public Hearing, unanimously and with great enthusiasm approved our design.
Gravemarkers that at some point had been removed from their respective plots and installed on the walls were removed and installed in the ground 12” from the wall.
Collaborators: Jablonski Building Conservation, Old Structures Engineers, Urban Arborists, Support For Architects, and West New York Restoration.