Controversy erupted in 1883 when the Trustees of St. Patrick’s Cathedral announced plans to remove their cemetery at 11th Street, between 1st Avenue and Avenue A in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, so that the land could be sold. The cemetery, which extended to 12th Street and occupied most of the block, was opened in 1833 to serve the city’s Catholic community after the burial ground around St. Patrick’s Old Cathedralreached capacity. Fifteen years later, the 11th Street Catholic Cemetery was also full and burials there ceased after the church opened Calvary Cemetery in Queens in 1848. According to an 1899 article written by Archbishop Michael Augustine Corrigan, over 41,000 interments were made in the 11th Street cemetery between 1833 and 1848.
By the time the removal and sale was proposed in 1883, the cemetery had been in disuse for several decades. At a January 1883 meeting to consider the matter, the Trustees of St. Patrick’s advocated for removing the graves to Calvary Cemetery because, “The old cemetery has been neglected and has become a scene of desolation. The fences have been broken by boys, and stones, pieces of pottery, tin cans, and other refuse have been thrown into it, until it has reached such a condition that it has become a great source of trouble to the church to arrange for protecting its property against trespassers.”
Many lot-holders opposed disturbing the graves of their relatives, contending that the cemetery was sacred ground and that selling it would be sacrilegious. Among the opponents was attorney Arthur J. Delaney, who had several family members interred in the cemetery. Delaney obtained a temporary injunction preventing the removals, claiming that lot-holders, as purchasers of burial rights, had a perpetual interest in the ground that would be violated if the bodies were moved and the cemetery sold. The State Supreme Court dissolved the injunction shortly after its issuance, saying that payment for interment in a cemetery gives no title to the land, only the rights to be buried and remain undisturbed for as long as the cemetery continues to operate and to have one’s remains removed and properly reburied in a new burial place once the ground ceases to be used as a cemetery.
Another 25 years passed before removal of the cemetery was carried out. The church met with opposition again in 1907 when it resolved to proceed with the disinterments, but the graves were finally removed in 1909 and the remains of an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 individuals were reinterred in Section 4B at Calvary Cemetery. It is not known what happened to the remains of the tens of thousands of other individuals that were said to have been interred in the 11th Street cemetery. The property at 11th Street was sold in 1912; East Side Community High School, Open Road Park, and Mary Help of Christians Church occupy the old cemetery site today.
Sources: Dripps’ 1852 Map of the City of New-York extending northward to Fiftieth St; Bromley’s 1911 Atlas of the city of New York, borough of Manhattan Pl.12; NYCityMap; A brief sketch of the early history of the Catholic Church on the island of New York 119-120; “The Catholic Cemeteries of New York,” Historical Records and Studies 1, 374; “Excited Roman Catholics: The Proposed Removal of Dead Bodies from a Cemetery,” New York Times Jan 4, 1883; “Selling the Graves,” New York Herald, Jan. 5, 1883, 6; “The Cathedral Cemetery Case,” New York Times Jun 5, 1883; “Catholics to Abandon East Side Cemetery,” New York Times Feb 3, 1907; “Give Up An Old Cemetery: Catholic Burying Ground in East Eleventh Street to be Abandoned,” New York Times Mar 28, 1909; “Sell Old Catholic Cemetery at Last,” New York Times, Nov 7, 1912.
New York City Cemetery Project 
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