Evergreens Cemetery
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Southern (Bushwick Avenue) entrance
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Location | 1629 Bushwick Ave., Brooklyn, New York |
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Coordinates | 40°41′2.0″N 73°54′4.3″W / 40.683889°N 73.901194°WCoordinates: 40°41′2.0″N 73°54′4.3″W / 40.683889°N 73.901194°W |
Area | 225 acres (91 ha) |
Built | 1849 |
Architect | Vaux, Calvert; etc |
NRHP Reference # | 07001192 |
Added to NRHP | November 15, 2007 |
The Cemetery of the Evergreens is a non-denominational cemetery in Brooklyn and Queens, New York, colloquially called Evergreen Cemetery. It was incorporated in 1849, not long after the passage of New York's Rural Cemetery Act spurred development of cemeteries outside Manhattan. For a time, it was the busiest cemetery in New York City; in 1929 there were 4,673 interments. The cemetery borders Brooklyn and Queens and covers 225 acres (0.91 km2) of rolling hills and gently sloping meadows. It features several thousand trees and flowering shrubs in a park-like setting. The Evergreens is the final resting place of more than 526,000 people.
The Evergreens was built on the principle of the rural cemetery. Two of the era's most noted landscape architects, Andrew Jackson Downing and Alexander Jackson Davis, were instrumental in the layout of the cemetery grounds.
The Evergreens has a monument to six victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of March 25, 1911 who were unidentified for nearly a century. In 2011, Michael Hirsch, a historian, completed four years of research that identified these victims by name (see Group monument, below).
There are also 17 British Commonwealth service personnel buried in the cemetery, 13 from World War I and 4 from World War II.
The cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 15, 2007.Cypress Hills Cemetery lies to its northwest.