There is now a high school and playground on this lot. Photo requests cannot be fulfilled.

Union Cemetery

(1851 - 1897)

The Union Cemetery of the Methodist Protestant churches of Manhattan and Brooklyn was founded in 1851 on 10 acres of land near the Queens county line in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

In 1893, claiming that the cemetery was full and that the City of Brooklyn was threatening to cut streets through the property, the trustees of Trinity Methodist Protestant Church of Williamsburg (which formed from the merger of the Attorney Street and Grand Street congregations in the 1880s) announced plans to sell Union Cemetery and remove the remains from the site. A number of lot owners protested the action and obtained a temporary injunction against the sale. After four years of litigation, the state Supreme Court upheld the trustees' right to dispose of the property and it was sold to merchant Henry Batterman, who proposed to subdivide it into building lots.

In 1897, Union Cemetery in Brooklyn was sold. Grounds at Cedar Grove Cemetery in Queens were acquired for reinterrment of the remains from Union Cemetery. Between December 1897 and January 1898, remains of an estimated 30,000 individuals were transferred to the new Union burial grounds at Cedar Grove. The transfer was reportedly undertaken with great care—a single box was used for the contents of each grave, with the intention that each be reinterred in a plot or lot of the same size from which it was removed and in corresponding order along with any associated monuments.

In 1907, the city purchased much of the property and subsequently erected Bushwick High School and Bushwick Playground there. The rest of the site was built over with residences.

Cedar Grove Cemetery acknowledges that the bodies were re-interred there. They have very few records of the re-interments.