Maimonides Cemetery & Mount Hope Cemetery

Mausoleums in Mount Hope Cemetery, April 2018 (Mary French)

“This Is Not Cypress Hills Cemetery” reads a sign immediately inside the gate at Maimonides Cemetery in Brooklyn. It’s easy to understand why disoriented visitors stumble into Maimonides by accident—its gate is located a short distance eastward of the entrance to the large, nondenominational Cypress Hills Cemetery on Jamaica Avenue and it, along with the adjacent Mount Hope Cemetery, is nestled into a notch of land cut along Cypress Hills’ southeast border. These two small cemeteries are timeworn today—especially their grand entrance buildings, which are targets of graffiti and vandalism— but in the late 19th-early 20^th century, Maimonides and Mount Hope were among the fashionable burial grounds of New York’s Jewish community.

A 1905 map showing Maimionides and Mount Hope cemeteries, situated along Jamaica Ave and the border of Cypress Hills Cemetery

Maimonides Benevolent Society was formed in 1853 by a group of “wealthy Hebrews of New York City” to assist one another in times of illness and difficulty and to look after the needs of their community. Soon after this mutual aid society was organized, a plot in Cypress Hills Cemetery was purchased as a burial ground for its members. When this plot became full, they purchased, in 1879, 8 acres of land adjoining Cypress Hills to establish a new cemetery for the association as well as for other Jewish societies and families. The red-brick gatehouse on Jamaica Avenue was built in 1892 and by 1900 about 1,700 bodies had been interred in Maimonides’ grounds. To meet the need for more burial space, Maimonides Benevolent Society eventually purchased more land in Elmont on Long Island and continues to operate both cemeteries today. Maimonides Cemetery in Brooklyn is notable as the burial place of two pioneering motion picture executives—Marcus Loew, founder of the Loew’s theatre chain and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studios; and Joseph Schenck, an early president of United Artists and co-founder of Twentieth Century Pictures, which later became 20^th Century Fox.

An 1880 advertisement for Maimonides Cemetery from one of the city’s Jewish newspapers.

In 1881, members of several other Jewish fraternities and societies—including the Free Sons of Israel and Phoenix Widows’ and Orphans’ Aid Society—that had also outgrown their earlier burial grounds at Cypress Hills and elsewhere, formed Mount Hope Cemetery Association and purchased 12 acres of land immediately east of Maimonides Cemetery to establish a new cemetery. Like Maimonides, they sold plots to Jewish societies and families, and by 1900 3,000 individuals were interred here. The cemetery’s administration building, which replaced an earlier gatehouse constructed when the cemetery was established in 1881, was recognized by the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce’s building awards competition when it was built in 1931. Although tattered and covered with graffiti now, this elegant Art Deco structure, and Mount Hope’s beautifully intricate ironwork entrance gates, are gems hidden in the chaotic surroundings of Jamaica Avenue.

The gatehouse at Maimonides Cemetery, April 2018 (Mary French)

A view of Maimonides Cemetery, Jan 2016 (Mary French)

The entrance building at Mount Hope Cemetery, April 2018 (Mary French)

A view of Mount Hope Cemetery, Jan 2016 (Mary French)

An aerial view of Maimonides and Mount Hope cemeteries, 2012

View more photos of Maimonides and Mount Hope cemeteries.

Sources: Hyde’s 1905 Atlas of the Borough of Queens Vol. 4 Pl. 10; “Maimonides Cemetery—A New Hebrew Burying Ground,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle Oct 6 1879; [Classified Ad], The Jewish Messenger July 30 1880; “Local News—Maimonides Benevolent Society,” The Jewish Messenger Sep 16 1892; The Leonard Manual of the Cemeteries of New York and Vicinity (1901), 52, 55-56; Maimonides Cemeteries; “The City—Mount Hope Cemetery,” The American Hebrew Sept 2 1881; “Local News—A New Cemetery,” The Jewish Messenger Sept 16 1881; “Chamber Cites Boro Buildings Erected in 1931,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle Feb 21 1932; NYCityMap

A.M.E. Zion Church Cemetery

Mother AME Zion Church situated on the southwest corner of Leonard and Church streets, 1852 (Dripps 1852)

New York City’s oldest black congregation, Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, was founded in 1796 by a group of about 100 worshippers who had been part of the mostly white John Street Methodist Church. In 1800, they built their first church building at the corner of Leonard and Church Streets in present-day Tribeca, where they remained until 1864. Here the congregation thrived, growing to over 750 members by 1821 when they separated from the white Methodist Episcopal Church denomination and formed a separate conference of AME Zion churches that spread throughout the United States and Canada and became known for religious and social activism. Today there are more than 1.2 million members of the AME Zion denomination that began with the Mother Zion congregation.

Newspaper notice announcing removal of remains from the AME Zion Church, 1864

In 1807 a commissioner of health informed the city inspector that the AME Zion Church at Leonard Street “has no burying ground, but inter all their dead in a vault under the church. Since the first commencement of this practice [of burying their dead in the vault under the church] full five years have elapsed and I believe it will be nearly correct to state that, at an average, One hundred and fifty persons have been interred there annually since that period: hence there are now in that vault not less than seven hundred fifty dead bodies.” Fearing health risks, the Common Council prohibited further interments in the vault, and granted the church a section of the public burial ground located at today’s Washington Square Park. In 1864, Mother Zion sold its church property at Leonard Street for $90,000 and removed the bodies that had been interred there to grounds at Cypress Hills Cemetery. Mother AME Zion Church is now located on 137^th Street in Harlem and a 60-story skyscraper, 56 Leonard Street, is on the site of Mother Zion’s first church and burial ground.

A marker embedded in the sidewalk at the corner of Leonard and Church streets denotes the site’s history, March 2018 (Mary French)

Former site of Mother Zion’s original church and burial ground

The AME Zion grounds at Cypress Hills Cemetery

Sources: Dripps’ 1852 Map of the City of New-York extending northward to Fiftieth St; Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, 1784-1831 (City of New York 1917), 4: 522-523, 525; “To Whom It May Concern [Notice],” New-York Daily Tribune Apr 21, 1864, 2; The Cypress Hills Cemetery, 1863 catalog & list of lot holders]; Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church Designation Report (Landmarks Preservation Commission 1993); African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (Britannica.com); Cypress Hills Cemetery Map, May 2014; OpenStreetMap