Students restoring Prospect Cemetery

From the Times Ledger:

...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.

Does this house in Jamaica date back to 1799?

"Here's a Queens gem for you. Have you ever heard of Keteltas Manor? According to photographer Matthew X. Kiernan, the colonial-period mansion built in 1799 is still standing at 88-35 144th Street in Jamaica. This building has had numerous renovations over the centuries and the City Map lists its completion as 1935.

Its original owner, Rev. Abraham Keteltas was a Revolutionary but also a slave owner. Its current owner is Deokallie Loknauth. Being located on a corner, I can imagine developers salivating over the thought of demolishing Keteltas Manor.

So let's fight for it while it has a chance!

Keteltas is a descendant of Huguenot French settlers. He is buried in Prospect Cemetery."

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Documentary about Prospect Cemetery

From Curbed:

350-year-old Prospect Cemetery in Queens is the subject of a documentary that is getting the Kickstarter treatment this month, and the fund-raising campaign has been successful thus far. The documentary's director is Peter Riegert, who is an actor (Animal House, Local Hero) and Oscar-nominated director (By Courier). Riegert is making a documentary titled Prospect about the savior of the Prospect Cemetery from the encroachment of nature, neglect, and vandalism. As he says in his Kickstarter appeal, "we resist our mortality, but nature insists upon it." More than just a tale of urban reclamation, however, the documentary is a history of a small slice of Queens and NYC.