Queens Borough President Donovan Richards Jr. is calling on the city to purchase the site of an historic burial ground in Elmhurst, Queens, that was turned into a parking lot and transform it into a memorial for the enslaved and formerly enslaved New Yorkers buried there.
Richards said he was calling for action in response to The City Reporter’s revelations about the site, where dozens of junked vehicles were deposited on top of the sacred ground, including many towed there under an NYPD program to remove abandoned vehicles from city streets.
The site at 47-11 90th St. was purchased in the 1820s by the St. Mark African Methodist Episcopal Church, which sold it in the 1930s and moved to Jackson Heights but still retains stewardship over the graves located there.
This week, the Rev. Kimberly Detherage of St. Mark AME told The City Reporter that the city should buy the site and turn it into a memorial. The lot is now in foreclosure after the owner, who had originally planned to build condominiums on the site, failed to pay the $6.5 million mortgage — and subsequently disappeared.
In a release Wednesday, the borough president said he will call on the Mamdani administration to “convert it into greenspace that would include a proper memorial to those buried there” similar to the Olde Towne of Flushing Burial Ground, where the remains of African American and Native American people are buried.
The Elmhurst site made national headlines in 2011 when workers performing excavation for a planned luxury condo project unearthed an iron coffin containing the remains of an African American woman who died around 1850 of smallpox.
The owner at first agreed to create a community room and memorial at the site in exchange for St. Mark’s permission to continue with the condo project, but soon after archaeologists hired by the owner discovered and disinterred 10 more bodies, including another iron coffin.
MORE: They Paved a Historic NYC Black Burial Ground. Now It’s a Lot for Abandoned Cars.
Chrysalis Archaeology placed the bodies in secure storage offsite, its president told The City Reporter, and made clear they believe there are at least another 100 bodies still there.
An earlier archaeological assessment had estimated the number of bodies on the site at approximately 290.
The condo project evaporated and last year the owner paved over the site and began using it as a parking lot. The city Department of Buildings deemed the lot illegal, and last month ordered that it be shut down by Nov. 30.
Richards said he would hold a press conference at the site on Friday.
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The post From Parking Lot to Memorial? Queens Borough Prez Wants City to Buy Paved-Over Black Cemetery appeared first on The City Reporter.
