The Rural Cemetery Act was a law passed by the New York Legislature

New York Legislature

The New York State Legislature is the term often used to refer to the two houses that act as the state legislature of the U.S. state of New York. The New York Constitution does not designate an official term for the two houses together...

 on April 27, 1847, that authorized commercial burial grounds in rural New York state

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

. The law led to burial of human remains becoming a commercial business for the first time, replacing the traditional practice of burying the dead in churchyards and on private farmland

Arable land

In geography and agriculture, arable land is land that can be used for growing crops. It includes all land under temporary crops , temporary meadows for mowing or pasture, land under market and kitchen gardens and land temporarily fallow...

. One effect of the law was the development of a large concentration of cemeteries along the border between the New York City boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn.

The law's enactment came during an era when a burgeoning urban population was crowding out Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

 churchyards traditionally used for burials and the concept of the rural cemetery

Rural cemetery

The rural cemetery or garden cemetery is a style of burial ground that uses landscaping in a park-like setting.As early as 1711 the architect Sir Christopher Wren had advocated the creation of burial grounds on the outskirts of town, "inclosed with a strong Brick Wall, and having a walk round, and...

 on the outskirts of a city was becoming stylish.

Provisions and effects of the law

The law authorized nonprofit entities to establish cemeteries

Cemetery

A cemetery is a place in which dead bodies and cremated remains are buried. The term "cemetery" implies that the land is specifically designated as a burying ground. Cemeteries in the Western world are where the final ceremonies of death are observed...

 on rural land and sell burial plots, and it exempted from property tax

Property tax

A property tax is an ad valorem levy on the value of property that the owner is required to pay. The tax is levied by the governing authority of the jurisdiction in which the property is located; it may be paid to a national government, a federated state or a municipality...

ation land that was so used. A few rural cemeteries had been established in New York before the new law was passed (including Green-Wood Cemetery

Green-Wood Cemetery

Green-Wood Cemetery was founded in 1838 as a rural cemetery in Brooklyn, Kings County , New York. It was granted National Historic Landmark status in 2006 by the U.S. Department of the Interior.-History:...

 in 1838 and Albany Rural Cemetery

Albany Rural Cemetery

The Albany Rural Cemetery was established October 7, 1844, in Menands, New York, just outside of the city of Albany, New York. It is renowned as one of the most beautiful, pastoral cemeteries in the United States, at over . Many historical American figures are buried there.-History:On April 2,...

 in 1844), but the law's passage soon led to the establishment of more new cemeteries near Manhattan, particularly in western Queens

Queens

Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....

. Both churches and land speculators responded to the new law by purchasing rural land for cemeteries. The move to rural burial grounds was accelerated by public suspicion that contamination from graveyards had been a cause of the epidemic

Epidemic

In epidemiology, an epidemic , occurs when new cases of a certain disease, in a given human population, and during a given period, substantially exceed what is expected based on recent experience...

s of cholera

Cholera

Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...

 that occurred in New York City in 1832 and 1849. In 1852 the Common Council of New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 passed a law prohibiting new burials in the city, which then consisted only of Manhattan. The City of Brooklyn (which comprised a small area of what is now Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

) had passed a similar law in 1849.
Calvary Cemetery, in Queens, which recorded its first burial in 1848, was created on land that the trustees of St. Patrick's Cathedral

St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York

The Cathedral of St. Patrick is a decorated Neo-Gothic-style Roman Catholic cathedral church in the United States...

 had begun to buy up two years earlier. Cypress Hills Cemetery, on the Queens-Brooklyn boundary line, was the first nonreligious cemetery to be formed in Queens under the new law. Its first burial also took place in 1848. All Faiths Cemetery traces its beginnings to 1852, when Frederick William Geissenhainer, pastor of St. Paul's German Lutheran Church in Manhattan, bought 225 acres (91.1 ha) in Middle Village, Queens

Middle Village, Queens

Middle Village is a neighborhood in central Queens, a borough of New York City. The neighborhood is located in the western central section of Queens, bounded to the north by Eliot Avenue, to the east by Woodhaven Boulevard, to the south by Cooper Avenue, and to the west by Fresh Pond Road...

, for a non-sectarian cemetery that was known in its in its early years as Lutheran Cemetery and later became All Faiths Cemetery. Other Queens and Brooklyn cemeteries established in the earliest years of the new law included Cemetery of the Evergreens on the Brooklyn-Queens border (founded in 1849 as a nonsectarian cemetery), Mount Olivet Cemetery in Queens (founded in 1850), and St. Michael's Cemetery in Queens (founded in 1852). In other parts of the state, rural cemeteries established after the passage of the Act included Oakwood Cemetery in Troy

Troy, New York

Troy is a city in the US State of New York and the seat of Rensselaer County. Troy is located on the western edge of Rensselaer County and on the eastern bank of the Hudson River. Troy has close ties to the nearby cities of Albany and Schenectady, forming a region popularly called the Capital...

, founded in 1848, and Oakwood Cemetery in Syracuse

Syracuse, New York

Syracuse is a city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States, the largest U.S. city with the name "Syracuse", and the fifth most populous city in the state. At the 2010 census, the city population was 145,170, and its metropolitan area had a population of 742,603...

, dedicated in 1859.

With the availability of new cemetery land outside the city, existing graveyards in Manhattan were abolished to make way for new development, with their gravestones removed and the human remains disinterred and reburied outside the city. Between 1854 to 1856, more than 15,000 bodies were exhumed from churchyards in Manhattan and Williamsburg

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Williamsburg is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, bordering Greenpoint to the north, Bedford-Stuyvesant to the south, Bushwick to the east and the East River to the west. The neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community Board 1. The neighborhood is served by the NYPD's 90th ...

 and moved to Cypress Hills Cemetery. Over the decades, Cypress Hills Cemetery alone is estimated to have reburied the remains of 35,000 people disinterred from their original burial sites in Manhattan. Other rural cemeteries that reinterred remains originally buried in Manhattan graveyards include Calvary and Evergreens Cemeteries in Queens, Green-Wood Cemetery in south Brooklyn, and Woodlawn Cemetery

Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx

Woodlawn Cemetery is one of the largest cemeteries in New York City and is a designated National Historic Landmark.A rural cemetery located in the Bronx, it opened in 1863, in what was then southern Westchester County, in an area that was annexed to New York City in 1874.The cemetery covers more...

 in The Bronx

The Bronx

The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated...

. Often, unidentified bones were reburied in mass grave

Mass grave

A mass grave is a grave containing multiple number of human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. There is no strict definition of the minimum number of bodies required to constitute a mass grave, although the United Nations defines a mass grave as a burial site which...

s. During construction of the Brooklyn Bridge

Brooklyn Bridge

The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States. Completed in 1883, it connects the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn by spanning the East River...

, which was started in 1870, bodies buried at Sands Street Methodist Church in Brooklyn were exhumed and moved to the Cemetery of the Evergreens.

The New York City-area cemeteries established under the Rural Cemetery Act grew very large. In 1880 All Faiths Cemetery had more burials than any other non-sectarian cemetery in the U.S., and in 1904 it was the burial site for all 1,021 people who died when the excursion boat SS General Slocum caught fire and sank during a Sunday School outing. As of the 1990s Calvary Cemetery held nearly three million graves.

Long-term impacts

The Rural Cemetery Act led to Queens being a borough

Borough (New York City)

New York City, one of the largest cities in the world, is composed of five boroughs. Each borough now has the same boundaries as the county it is in. County governments were dissolved when the city consolidated in 1898, along with all city, town, and village governments within each county...

 of cemeteries. Queens is home to 29 cemeteries holding more than five million graves and entombments, so that the "dead population" of the borough is more than twice the size of its live population. The large concentration of cemeteries on the border of Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

 and Queens is another effect of the law. Under the Act, each individual cemetery organization was limited to no more than 250 acres (1 km²) in one county, but some organizations circumvented that limit by purchasing larger parcels straddling the boundaries of two counties. As result, 17 cemeteries straddle the border between Queens and Brooklyn. As with Queens, the "dead population" of Brooklyn is estimated to exceed its living population.

In 1917 a state legislator from Queens complained that the law and the concentration of cemeteries that it had produced resulted in more than one-fifth of Queens' land being exempt from property tax. As of 1918 more than 22000 acres (89 km²) of land in Queens were owned by private tax-exempt cemeteries. Under current New York law, all cemetery property is exempt from property taxation, but current law allows the governments of Brooklyn, Queens, and certain other New York counties to limit the establishment of new cemeteries within their boundaries.