...after renovations that included the removal of the vegetation and the restoration of the on-site vacant Chapel of the Sisters, a group of volunteers and workers from Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery are repairing dozens of the toppled headstones.
“This is very interesting,” said volunteer Luci Cooke, 19, a college student from Brown University. “It’s actually excellent because I recognized some of the names in the tombstones.”
Cooke was working alongside Vivian Normant and Ali Dore, two of the five students visiting from France and helping in the project through an exchange program sponsored by Preservation Volunteers.
They were restoring the tombstone of Angeline Cornwell, who died in 1908 at age 78.
“This is a very good experience,” said Dore. “The work is hard, but I like it.”
Normant was an English teacher in France, but now she is getting her B.A. in art history back home to teach art to high school students.
“I love the work that is being done,” she said. “We are touching a part of history.”
The group, which includes students from Williamsburg High School for Architecture and Design, has restored about 50 damaged headstones. The project will also relandscape the grounds and institute an interpretative history of the place.
The colonial burial ground, next to the York College campus, dates back to 1660.
5 comments:
Some of these students should volunteer at Lutheran/All Faiths Cemetery in Middle Village before it becomes a complete disaster.
The two Dan Austin's treat it like their own fiefdom.
Thanks Crappy for such a great story. Nice to read something positive going on in our beloved Queens. My family plot is in the All Faiths Cemetery in MV and I've often driven around to look at other historical plots. Very interesting and so worth saving.
A feel good story. Where would our city be with out volunteers?
For 40 years I've taken the LIRR by this cemetery twice per day, and have watched it come back from jungle to respectful burial ground.
Have you noticed that it's always white people who do this volunteering?
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