The neighborhood of Kew Gardens is a mix of historic single-family residences, prewar co-ops, and recent infill condo boxes. It was built atop the glacial knob-and-kettle terrain that made for excellent golfing and contained a set of ponds dating to the last ice age. The largest of these was Crystal Lake.
As seen on this 1909 surveyor’s photo, the scene is pastoral but within a year this pond would be filled in favor of a train station that is still there today.
Having written about it earlier, I mentioned that Maple Grove Cemetery in Kew Gardens had a Sunnyside Plot on the north side of Queens Boulevard that was acquired by the city in 1934 for a park and the Van Wyck Expressway route. On an old map of the cemetery this plot had an unnamed pond at its northeastern corner.
Prolific Queens history author Carl Ballenas tells me that it did have a name, based on an 1878 letter to a newspaper editor. Continue reading
In an age when available cemetery plots are dwindling in New York, I feel fortunate that my family members planned ahead by reserving their final resting places in the same cemetery, allowing for the convenience of paying respect to multiple individuals in one visit. What it offers with access, Mount Hebron Cemetery lacks in design with most of its tombstones packed tightly next to each other. Roadways and walking paths are so narrow that one can trip on a tombstone.
The city’s cemeteries weren’t always like this. In the 19th century, they were deigned in the appearance of burial parks, with naturalistic landscaping, winding paths and water features. One such example is Memorial Park Lake at Maple Grove Cemetery in Kew Gardens, Queens. The above photo relates to a visit in the 1950s by local resident Jack Kerouac, which inspired a poem. Continue reading
Hidden Waters blog 