# How does NYC not run out of places to bury the dead? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 2, 2009, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-nyc-not-run-out-of-places-to-bury-the-dead/512356 "2009-10-02T16:05:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2009, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-nyc-not-run-out-of-places-to-bury-the-dead/512356/21 "2009-10-03T08:44:07Z")
> [@Tripler](#): > > Not to be indelicate, but are you literally describing opening up the same vault/sarcophagus/pine box, laying grandma on top of grandpa, and closing up the box? Usually caskets are stacked on top of each other in that type of situation. ---
**Author:** ![Tripler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripler/32/21807_2.png) [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2009, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-nyc-not-run-out-of-places-to-bury-the-dead/512356/22 "2009-10-03T15:33:24Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > Usually caskets are stacked on top of each other in that type of situation. Really? Do they just bring up the previous caskets, dig the hole a little deeper, and then put them all (plus the additional on) back in? I’m picturing stories and stories of caskets in a single hole. . . Tripler Seriously. I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2009, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-nyc-not-run-out-of-places-to-bury-the-dead/512356/23 "2009-10-03T16:28:55Z")
> [@Huerta88](#): > > New York is geographically not as small as you might think. Outside of Manhattan (where burials have been banned for some time), there’s more square mileage than you might think. I don’t know what one might think, but there’s really not that much area when divided by the eight million people. I’m always struck by how much nyc land is wasted on cemeteries. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2009, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-nyc-not-run-out-of-places-to-bury-the-dead/512356/24 "2009-10-03T16:39:41Z")
If you get your hands on a Hagstrom street atlas of NYC and look at the maps of Brooklyn and Queens you will see an amazing amount of square mileage devoted to cemeteries…lots of them and they are HUGE. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2009, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-nyc-not-run-out-of-places-to-bury-the-dead/512356/25 "2009-10-03T16:42:06Z")
Two words: East River ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2009, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-nyc-not-run-out-of-places-to-bury-the-dead/512356/26 "2009-10-03T17:44:51Z")
> [@Tripler](#): > > Not to be indelicate, but are you literally describing opening up the same vault/sarcophagus/pine box, laying grandma on top of grandpa, and closing up the box? > [@Tripler](#): > > Really? Do they just bring up the previous caskets, dig the hole a little deeper, and then put them all (plus the additional on) back in? I’m picturing stories and stories of caskets in a single hole. . . > > Tripler > Seriously. I don’t know. I could be wrong, but my understanding is that the first coffin is buried six feet deep. If the grave is re-used, it is re-opened and the next coffin is buried five feet deep, and so on. Coffins are not brought up. With a cheap pine box, it and the corpse may have decayed sufficiently that ground has collapsed and filled in most of the space taken up by the coffin. > [@](#): > > Again, with all due respect to your family, doesn’t that get . . . _messy_ after several decades? Or by “plot” do you mean “same small 1/8th acre for multiple graves”? > > Tripler > I’ve seen small family cemeteries. . . but not same _graves_. They were very poor Irish immigrants living in the South Bronx, and were buried in Calvary Cemetary in Sunnyside, Queens between 1884 and 1890. I have been to the gravesite. There is no marker; we found it based on cemetery records and a map of the plots. As far as I can tell it is a normal-sized single grave (but most of the other sites in that sector don’t have markers either). The plot was actually owned by my great-grandmother’s sister, who evidently bought it to bury her husband, who died of pneumonia at the age of 40 in 1884. Their 10-month-old daughter died and was buried there three months later. My great-grandfather, age 33, and my great-grandmother’s sister, age 36, died on the same day of pneumonia in 1886, and were buried in that same grave. His daughter, born three weeks after his death, died at the age of nine months, and was buried there too, as was another daughter who died at the age of four in 1888. My grandmother re-married about 1889, but died in 1890 at the age of 30 of tuberculosis and was also buried in the family plot. It took us some time to figure out who she was, since she was buried under her second husband’s last name. I assume she had inherited her sister’s plot; we don’t know why her husband didn’t have her buried elsewhere. My grandfather never, ever, spoke about his childhood. It wasn’t until we found the family gravesite, forty years after he died, that we understood why. He had lost both parents, two sisters, an aunt and an uncle, and a cousin within the space of six years, when he was between six and eleven years old. It was like something out of _Angela’s Ashes._ It brought home what life must have been like for poor immigrants back in those days. ---
**Author:** ![Diamonds02](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5a626/32.png) [@Diamonds02](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diamonds02)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2009, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-nyc-not-run-out-of-places-to-bury-the-dead/512356/27 "2009-10-05T01:56:46Z")
Thanks for the answers. You can’t bury people in Manhatton? The more you know! Okay as for multiple bodies in a single grave, I heard that it can vary (not just talking about NYC, but anywhere). Sometimes they stack caskets, as someone mentioned upthread. But, it can be extreme as someone digging up the original casket, removing it…and then fitting in as many bodies in the grave as they can without caskets. I remember seeing something like this on 20/20, a cemetary got in trouble for doing that. ---
**Author:** ![lieu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2009, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-nyc-not-run-out-of-places-to-bury-the-dead/512356/28 "2009-10-05T02:49:06Z")
Science will deliver. Nanomortality. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2009, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-nyc-not-run-out-of-places-to-bury-the-dead/512356/29 "2009-10-05T05:37:47Z")
> [@Mr.Moto](#): > > Yep. Pinelawn has its own stop on the LIRR. I have this twisted image of people boarding a LIRR train with a casket and the rest of the funeral goers all dressed in black riding out to Pinelawn. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2009, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-nyc-not-run-out-of-places-to-bury-the-dead/512356/30 "2009-10-05T06:13:03Z")
Speaking of shared graves, we wanted to bury the cremated remains of my uncle in my father’s plot – unc never married or had kids, and those of us dealing with his estate were pretty much total strangers to him. Anyway, we’re talking about a coffee can sized container of ashes. The cemetary wanted $3,000 to bury a coffee can in a plot we already owned. Unc is in my sister’s back yard. Haven’t heard a complaint yet. ---
**Author:** ![Serenata67](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/serenata67/32/10646_2.png) [@Serenata67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Serenata67)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2009, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-nyc-not-run-out-of-places-to-bury-the-dead/512356/31 "2009-10-05T12:16:17Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > We wanted a block of flats, not an abbatoir! … The tenants arrive here and are carried along the corridor on a conveyor belt in extreme comfort, past murals depicting Mediterranean scenes, towards the rotating knives. … ---
**Author:** ![butler1850](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/779978/32.png) [@butler1850](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/butler1850)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2009, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-nyc-not-run-out-of-places-to-bury-the-dead/512356/32 "2009-10-05T20:12:46Z")
> [@Zebra](#): > > I have this twisted image of people boarding a LIRR train with a casket and the rest of the funeral goers all dressed in black riding out to Pinelawn. Not so far from the truth in 19th century London. [Suite 101 - How-tos, Inspiration and Other Ideas to Try](http://georgian-victorian-britain.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_london_necropolis_railway) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-nyc-not-run-out-of-places-to-bury-the-dead/512356.md?page=1)