A cemetery for the City of New York

Abstract

Today, cemeteries are forgotten places. Once centers of cities and the societies they served, they have been pushed to the outskirts and turned into places of pure storage, devoid of memory. This thesis takes on the additional program of the Potter's Field: a burial place for the poor and unclaimed. Currently in New York the potter's field is located on Hart Island in the Bronx. This thesis proposes replacing that cemetery. Located at Riverside Park, this thesis proposes that the cemetery can be re-inserted into the public realm. Issues such as privacy, scale, individuality, and memory are confronted. By siting the cemetery in a park, connections are made between the active world of the living, and the world of the dead and mourning. This is accomplished mainly within the architecture of the section. What results is a hybrid space that is both inside and outside the realm of the park and the city.