Grove Street Cemetery

Grove Street Cemetery or Grove Street Burial Ground in New Haven, Connecticut is located adjacent to the Yale University campus. It was organized in 1796 as the New Haven Burying Ground and incorporated in October 1797 to replace the crowded burial ground on the New Haven Green. The first private, nonprofit cemetery in the world, it was one of the earliest burial grounds to have a planned layout, with plots permanently owned by individual families, a structured arrangement of ornamental plantings, and paved and named streets and avenues. This was "a real turning point... a whole redefinition of how people viewed death and dying", according to historian Peter Dobkin Hall, with novel ideas like permanent memorials and the sanctity of the deceased body. Many notable Yale and New Haven luminaries are buried in the Grove Street Cemetery, including fourteen Yale presidents; nevertheless, it was not restricted to members of the upper class, and was open to all.

Initially consisting of six acres (24,000 m²), it has been expanded to nearly 18 acres (73,000 m²). The perimeter of the cemetery was surrounded by an eight foot (2.4 m) stone wall in 1848-49, and the entrance on Grove Street is a brownstone Egyptian Revival gateway, designed by Henry Austin, and built in 1845. The lintel of the gateway is inscribed "The Dead Shall Be Raised."; the concluding period has been called the most eloquent and sublime piece of punctuation in stone. The quotation is taken from 1 Corinthians 15.52: "For the trumpet will sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed." The oft-recounted (and likely apocryphal) response of many presidents of Yale is, in substance, "They certainly will be, if Yale needs the property." Immediately inside the gate is a Victorian chapel, now used as an office. The gravestones from the New Haven Green (but not the remains) were moved here for preservation in 1821 and are displayed against the walls of the cemetery. Visitors from afar mingle with New Haven residents enjoying the quiet, park-like atmosphere.

Yale plans to construct two new residential colleges to the immediate north of the cemetery. Various people have accordingly suggested to the cemetery Proprietors that an additional gate be constructed in the north section of the historic wall that surrounds the burial ground to permit pedestrians to walk through the cemetery from the main Yale campus to the planned new colleges. In addition, the Proprietors recently considered a proposal brought forward by one Proprietor that would replace a portion of the stone sections of the wall bordering Prospect Street (the eastern border of the cemetery and a main route to the planned colleges) with iron fencing similar to that already running along most of the cemetery's southern border on Grove Street. This proposal, now withdrawn following a meeting of the Proprietors to which the public was invited for the first time, included architectural and landscaping designs by Yale Architecture School Dean Robert Stern, among the country's most distinguished architects (who will also be designing the new colleges).

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. It then included one contributing site, three contributing structures, and 15 contributing objects.

The Grove Street Cemetery was further designated a National Historic Landmark by the United States Secretary of the Interior in 2000.

It is managed by Camco Cemetery Management.