You think New York City streets are crowded? Imagine how bad it’s gotten below ground over the years. And not just on the L train.
Interring the dead has always been a challenge on a relatively small island like Manhattan, and over the years, dozens of areas have served as cemeteries.
One of the more popular final resting places, the graveyard at lower Manhattan’s Trinity Church, was packed with 125,000 bodies by 1822. Some corpses rested just 18 inches below ground, according to “The Graveyard Shift” by Carolee Inskeep. Lime had to be spread to combat the stench.
The city began forbidding burials south of Canal Street in 1832. In 1851, burials below 86th street were outlawed.
Before that, several now-prominent locations served as burial grounds, including Bryant Park, Union Square and the site of the Waldorf Astoria.
The big question, though, is whether there are still bodies decomposing beneath our feet. In the case of these five locations, the answer is yes.
James J. Walker Park
Hudson Street at Clarkson Street
From 1812 to 1895, the plot served as a burial ground for Trinity Church. The Parks Department acquired the land in 1895 for $520,000 and turned it into St. John’s Park. The bodies of the more prominent residents were removed, but those of the lower- and middle-class were not disturbed. The only tombstone left in the park is an 1834 monument (and sarcophagus) dedicated to three firemen killed battling a blaze on Pearl Street.
Madison Square Park
Broadway at East 23rd Street
Like Washington Square, this park also enjoyed a former life as a potter’s field, from 1791 to 1794. Many of the bodies interred here came from nearby Bellevue Hospital and local almshouses.
The land was converted to an Army arsenal in 1806 and later became a parade ground — all reportedly without the bodies being removed.
One person who definitely lies beneath the park is William Jenkins Worth, a veteran of the Mexican-American War. He’s buried on a small sliver of land next to Madison Square known as Worth Square, beneath an ornate obelisk.
Central Park
West 85th Street
All Angels Church, a mixed-race congregation that opened in 1848, once stood here, as did its graveyard. In 1857, the land was seized to build Central Park.
So what happened to all those bodies? It doesn’t seem like they were moved. In 1871, laborers uprooting a tree uncovered a coffin containing the remains of a 16-year-old member of All Angels who passed away in 1852. Nearby, another coffin was discovered. Decades later, a gardener uncovered more graves thought to have belonged to All Angels or one of its neighboring churches.
African Burial Ground
290 Broadway at Reade Street
In 1991, construction workers at 290 Broadway uncovered bones from an African-American cemetery located on the same spot from the late 1690s to 1794. Also interred: prisoners of war captured by the British during the Revolutionary War. As many as 20,000 people were estimated to have been laid to rest here.
In 1788, Africans filed a petition to stop medical students from stealing bodies from the cemetery for research. Nearly 200 years later, in 1991, 400 corpses were exhumed and sent to Howard University for study. Today, in addition to the IRS, the location houses a monument dedicated to the burial ground.
Washington Square Park
Fifth Avenue at Waverly Place
But the park also served as the city’s potter’s field beginning in 1797, and some 10,000 people were ultimately laid to rest here — many victims of a yellow-fever plague.
Prisoners from nearby Newgate Prison, who were executed via hanging from one of the park’s trees, were also buried here.
The potter’s field was shut down in 1825 following complaints from the residents of the surrounding posh neighborhood.
The land was soon turned into a park, but, according to “The Graveyard Shift,” no bodies were removed. In 2009, a tombstone belonging to a James Jackson, a grocer who died in 1799, was unearthed.