The New York City Marble Cemetery on 60 East 2nd Street was begun in 1831 and was the second non-sectarian burial ground in the City opened to the public. The cemetery was started shortly after the New York Marble Cemetery, one block away, had begun.
It was laid out on some land belonging to Samuel Cowdrey, a vault owner in the other cemetery. Once again, Perkins Nichols contracted for the construction of the vaults of Tuckahoe marble. The first vaults were ready by the summer of 1831. The new organization received its own act of incorporation on April 26, 1832. Over the next three years the corporation acquired first the land in which the vaults were situated, and then adjoining lots, until it reached its present limits in 1835. The grounds now contain 258 vaults.
When opened, it was considered a fashionable burial place, and the use of monuments and markers was permitted there to signalize the locations of the family vaults. It was laid out with long parallel walks between which are narrow strips of ground punctuated by the square marble vault slabs.
The most important person buried in this cemetery was ex-President James Monroe, who had moved to New York in 1830, after the death of his wife, to live with his son-in-law, Samuel Gouverneur. Gouverneur owned a vault in the cemetery, and when Monroe died on July 4, 1831, he became one of the first to be buried here. The interment ceremonies were carried out with much pomp and military pageantry, which served to increase greatly the prestige of the cemetery. In 1857, however, a number of Virginians residing in New York decided to erect a monument over Monroe’s vault. This move prompted the Virginia Legislature to pass a resolution to have the ex-President’s remains returned to Virginia. The Gouverneur family agreed, and on July 2, 1858, Monroe’s body was removed.
Another nationally known figure buried here is John Lloyd Stephens, who pioneered archeological research in the Mayan country of Mexico in the Nineteenth Century; his vault is marked by a Mayan glyph designed by his celebrated collaborator, Frederick Catherwood.
The cemetery also holds the remains of Dutch dominies, the oldest white men’s bones interred on the island of Manhattan.
edited from New York City Marble Cemetery
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