Stranded graveyards

[JNA]

NY Times article lead to this Paved Paradise: Cemeteries in Parking Lots

Once sacred ground, it's now a conspicuous patch of grass in a sea of asphalt, a quirky spectacle to the shoppers forced to drive around it

Does your fair community have one of these ? I am not aware of or have found one.
How would you deal with it ? rezoning, platting & deed restriction, site plan review

[Dan]

There was a pioneer cemetery in a shopping center that I reviewed when I was a planner in the Denver area. (Google Street View)

[ursus]

There's a very small graveyard (almost like a family plot) along a highway in my town. hemmed in by drive-in and small office building now. It doesn't look like any attempt has ever been made to move it. I'm going to guess it is a family plot and still owned by that family.

[Whose Yur Planner]

In Elizabethtown, Kentucky there are some old graves in a walled off area between a parking lot and shopping center. The wall isn't very high and you can look over it and read the tombstones.

[smccutchan1]

I worked on a residential subdivision several years ago that had a 1880's vintage pioneer cemetery in the middle of it. It hadn't been kept up in several decades and needed some repairs to the fencing and landscaping. We incorporated the cemetery into the overall design of the subdivision by putting a larger open space buffer around it, repairing various improvements and making it much more accessible to the general public by placing it on a residential street created in the neighborhood. We provided a generous front, landscaped setback.

It added a nice nostalgic approach to the neighborhood and we were able to preserve the integrity of the last resting place for many of the communities original settlers.

[Mud Princess]

We had a family cemetery on our college campus with some of the gravestones dating back to the early 1800s. The campus was built around it. I used to like to visit the place for a little quiet time... but the college joke was that if you didn't behave, you'd end up buried there.

[Linda_D]

"Stranded cemeteries" aren't only found in urban and suburban settings. They're most "noticeable" there, but they also exist in rural areas, where if they were originally set back from the road, they're now set in the middle of some farmer's cornfield or some exurbanite's horse pasture, frequently enclosed in stone walls. You see them more frequently in NE and in eastern NY than in Central or Western NY, possibly because these cemeteries were started before community burying grounds became popular. In CNY and WNY, most old cemeteries, even private ones, tend to border roads.

[Rygor]

There was a pioneer cemetery in a shopping center that I reviewed when I was a planner in the Denver area. (Google Street View)

Is the name of the cemetery "Naturally Organic", or is that the name of the store behind it?

[Coragus]

I did a single lot subdivision plat that had a graveyard marked on it with a 20' access easement. I tramped out there with a coworker and found a big tree.

[ThePinkPlanner]

Neat blog, thanks for sharing! A friend of mine did her graduate work on the impact of roads and development on historic New England cemeteries. I'll have to pass this onto her.

We have a small one in the Burlington area that sits surrounded on three sides by pavement of the state's largest airport. There are planes taxi'd right up to within a few yards of headstones.

[mgk920]

The Illinois State Supremes just ruled that the City of Chicago can proceed with relocating the graves of a small 'stranded' cemetery in order to build a new runway at O'Hare International Airport ('ORD').

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...,6114475.story

Mike

[ThePinkPlanner]

I meant to add that this line made me giggle:
I mean, the good spots had already started going to the handicapped; it was only a matter of time before the dead horned in on the action, too.