First Shearith Israel Graveyard

One of the oldest cemeteries in Manhattan, left by the first Jewish congregation in North America

Local name: First Shearith Israel Graveyard

Collection: The Lower East Side and Chinatown · USA · Open in OpenStreetMap

Gravestones, flat-topped tombs and the monument with a stone pyramid · Oleg Yunakov, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

The story

Before you is a tiny cemetery behind a fence, squeezed between buildings. It is the oldest surviving cemetery of Congregation Shearith Israel. The congregation was founded in 1654 by Jews of Spanish and Portuguese descent. It was the first Jewish congregation in North America. Joseph Bueno de Mesquita bought this plot in 1682. A year later his relative Benjamin was buried here. The congregation calls it the second oldest surviving burial ground in Manhattan: only the northern part of Trinity Churchyard is older. Back then this was a hill above the East River, outside the town. In March 1776 General Charles Lee proposed that a battery be placed at the foot of the “Jews’ burying ground” to close the river to British ships. When the British took the city, they used the position too. It is said that British soldiers pried lead plates off the gravestones and melted them into bullets. Patriots of the Revolutionary War are buried here, among them the congregation’s cantor, Gershom Mendes Seixas. Every year in late May, on Memorial Day, the congregation comes here to say memorial prayers and place flags on their graves. In 1823 the city banned burials south of Canal Street. And in 1855 an extension of the Bowery was cut through the cemetery: most of the plot was taken for the street, and two hundred and fifty-six graves were moved. About a hundred gravestones remain. Look for the marble tombs with flat tops and the small monument with a stone pyramid on top.

Visiting

55 St. James Place, by Chatham Square. The gate is locked: visits inside are by arrangement with Congregation Shearith Israel only. The cemetery is easy to see through the fence from the sidewalk.