Melting Pot, Six Feet Under

Memorial Day Weekend occasions this tour of Trinity Church Cemetery in Upper Manhattan led by Columbia Community Scholar Eric K. Washington, an authority on Gotham’s eventful past buried beneath this verdant landscape. Established in 1842, the 24-acre greensward forms Manhattan’s only still-admitting cemetery. The grounds first laid out by James Renwick, Jr. – and later improved by Calvert Vaux – are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Representing New York City’s wide-ranging contributors to American history, notable permanent residents may include John James Audubon, naturalist; Mayors Cadwallader D. Colden (whose grave Eric rediscovered for Trinity Archives), Fernando Wood, A. Oakey Hall, and Edward I. Koch; Madame Eliza Jumel, adventuress; John Jacob Astor, merchant; Clement Clarke Moore, poet; Philip Ernst, original New York Philharmonic flutist; David Hosack, Hamilton’s last doctor; Mrs. Dita H. Kinney, military officer; Caroline Astor, doyenne of Gilded Age polite society; Rita de Acosta Lydia, American beauty of Belle Epoque Paris; and Mercedes de Acosta, lesbian paramour of some of the most important women of the 20th-century. Please wear sturdy shoes that are suitable for rustic country paths.