The Best Neighbor is a Dead Neighbor

May 9, 2018 5:22 PM

Graveyards on three sides makes for a quiet neighborhood, most of the time.
posted by MovableBookLady (28 comments total)

I like this Caroline. She has a good sense of humor.
posted by 41swans at 6:13 PM on May 9, 2018

I was real-estate hunting a few months back, found a listing on "Trumps Ct", which was right next to a cemetery, and my final NOPE when I found out the real estate agent selling the house was "Morningstar"...

It was a great price tho
posted by lineofsight at 6:30 PM on May 9, 2018 [11 favorites]

I have always wanted to live in this beautiful triangular building at the end of the block-long Bottinelli Place here in New Orleans. [more info]
posted by komara at 6:48 PM on May 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

I know a lot of dead people and was just like, “Let's just all be cool here. I'm gonna walk my dog near you and he might pee near your body, but it's not in a malicious way."

...

I had a funny moment on Halloween this year. I dressed up as Sally from A Nightmare Before Christmas and she's sort of a zombie rag-doll-looking character, with sunken cheeks and eyes and parts of her face sewn up. And I did really elaborate makeup and some guy was pulling into the graveyard to turn around off the highway and saw me walking my dog in my zombie makeup and got totally freaked out. He rolled down his window and yelled, "You scared the s--t out of me!"

She sounds really cool.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:00 PM on May 9, 2018 [7 favorites]

Mrs. Mosley grew up right next door to a cemetery (Her father helped close up at night and told her he was "Locking up the dead people"), and she liked it just fine.

All this also reminds me of an old George Carlin joke: "Do you know what the best part is of living at the beach? You only have assholes on three sides of you."
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 7:13 PM on May 9, 2018 [4 favorites]

The only thing I miss about my last apartment was its view... just across a small lane abutting a giant cemetery. I got up every morning and watched the sunlight angle across the tombstones. Quietest neighbors I'll ever have!
posted by TwoStride at 7:15 PM on May 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

I lived next to a pleasant little cemetery for a few years, but our neighbor on the other side was a private residential academy.

This graveyard, it was not quiet.
posted by mykescipark at 7:40 PM on May 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

I was just walking home from dinner and randomly paused two blocks from my apartment and opened Metafilter on my phone.

I was about to comment that I live across from a cemetery in New Orleans and it's great, when I noticed komara's post, looked up and noticed I was directly facing the very building he's talking about. Anyway, the cemetery across the street has this amazing but terrible tombstone, which I'm not sure I'll otherwise have a chance to share on the blue: https://www.instagram.com/p/8Gva3mL_0F/
posted by smelendez at 7:51 PM on May 9, 2018 [48 favorites]

I live a block from a giant cemetery in a neighborhood which is also isolated from the rest of the city. But our isolation stems from the fact that our little four-by-six block area is bounded on all sides but the north by arterials. So we have impossible problems stemming from ease of accessibility, essentially, despite the rivers of cars imposing physical boundaries.

Still a great thing to walk the dog in that cemetery. Rear guns from the USS Constitution. A founder of baseball in the Pacific Northwest. My neighbor and friend in both life and death, Dick. Countless crows and countless swallows, cawing and clowning and wheeling. Uncapped needles. Kids cutting school. Giant trees that fall in storms. Hundreds of infant graves from the 1918 influenza epidemic. Enormous mausoleums in questionable taste. Broken headstones. Floated-up fingerbones. Funerals. Life.
posted by mwhybark at 8:06 PM on May 9, 2018 [6 favorites]

What amazed me was the view of the cemetery with Manhattan in the background. I had no idea queens was so far from downtown, I have no concept of how large NYC is. (I was last there as a 15 year old and I guess I didn’t pay attention).
posted by saucysault at 8:36 PM on May 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

I grew up in a house next to a graveyard from when I was 3 to when I was 8. It was an old one where the graves were mostly 50 or more years old so people didn't come there to mourn or anything, so my parents let me and my brother play there. It was like having an extra large backyard, full of interesting stone monuments. Pretty cool.

Later as an adult I lived opposite a cemetery for a year or so, and it was actually pretty loud at nights, because the local teenagers would all meet there to drink and smoke weed.
posted by lollusc at 10:25 PM on May 9, 2018

That was a fabulous read! I’ve often thought it would be nice to live near a pretty, park-like cemetery.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:04 PM on May 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

In one of my postings overseas, I lived in a British vicarage overlooking a 400-year-old cemetery for a couple of years. A very peaceful vista, lots of greenery and trees. On Sundays, church folk would meander through the place, but otherwise the outer gate was locked and I had pretty much unrestricted access through the vicarage and the old church the rest of the week. Cheapest rent I’ve ever paid, too. A+++ would definitely do it again.
posted by darkstar at 11:36 PM on May 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

A cemetery view is even better in Poland because of the custom of putting candles on graves. All Saints and Easter especially turn my neighbourhood cemetery into a sea of flames by night.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 11:44 PM on May 9, 2018 [11 favorites]

A cemetery in my home town has this big "Think about death" sign on the gate. There's a residential block right across the street, so you get to think about death every time you go out on your balcony.
posted by Vesihiisi at 1:29 AM on May 10, 2018 [4 favorites]

I live opposite an old cemetery, where there is a centuries old tradition for people using it as a park, for picnics, sunbathing and playing. (They probably didn't sunbathe 200 years ago, but you know…) During the -60's and 70's when people moved out to the suburbs, it was mostly abandoned, and it grew into a magical wilderness, which the city planned to mow down and replace with public housing. Luckily it was not only saved, but it was saved with a plan to keep the feeling of wilderness and now there are tons of different plant-types, often things that were intended to be decorative bushes that have grown into huge exotic trees. There are even fallen trees and there are large areas covered with aromatic herbs like sage, thyme, lavender and ramps. And there are birds and cats and squirrels and foxes.
Often people come from out of town to see the graves of famous people who are buried there, and they are shocked by the half-naked sunbathers, and the kids running around playing. But I feel there is a beauty in the meeting of life and death there. And it demystifies death for the kids. When my oldest was a kid she asked: shouldn't we buy one of those little gardens for when you are dead, mum?
posted by mumimor at 2:07 AM on May 10, 2018 [8 favorites]

After my parents split up, they lived next door to one another for a while, as though unconsciously re-enacting a bad '70s sit-com. A year or two later my Dad bought a house in the grounds of the local municipal cemetery, which, I presume, must have originally have been intended for a resident caretaker. As it was still a 'working' cemetery it got a certain amount of traffic, but, even so, its location meant that it was generally very peaceful, and he and his new girlfriend were often alone there with their dogs; and with the birds and squirrels that called the place home. He loved it there, but as the years passed she tired of it, and she eventually talked him in to selling up & moving out.
posted by misteraitch at 4:55 AM on May 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

I live on a "U" shaped street inset into a cemetery in Queens. It's not the one that Shahood lives near, but it's part of the same "cemetery belt." The cemetery in the photo at the top of the story? That's my cemetary. She's right on all points. It's a really quiet neighborhood. And shenanigans happen on the short bit of street that runs along the cemetery. When I'm walking the dog, that's where I find teenagers smoking weed, assorted drug bags, used condoms, etc.
posted by Drab_Parts at 5:57 AM on May 10, 2018

When I told one of my coworkers that I bought a condo that abuts a cemetery and is within walking distance of 2 or 3 cemeteries (depending on what your definition of "walking distance" is), her immediate reaction was, "I could never do that! I'd be so creeped out!"

The thing about living in a city when your neighbor is a cemetery: people are really into respecting the dead. The chances of having luxury condos or a mcmansion pop up are slim to none (this is especially true if the cemetery is privately owned). If road noise bothers me, I can have my bedroom on the side next to the cemetery. And barring a huge plague or ebola outbreak, the dead aren't much of a threat to the living.

Maybe it would be different if I believed in ghosts?
posted by giraffe at 7:03 AM on May 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

I was looking for a hotel room in Pacific Grove and was searching reviews. One place had a real mix of reviews because one side of the property looked out on a massive graveyard. While some people loved it, others didn't want to spend their vacations looking out over the tombstones. Of course, I got a room there immediately and requested one overlooking the graveyard.
posted by Sophie1 at 7:28 AM on May 10, 2018 [5 favorites]

What amazed me was the view of the cemetery with Manhattan in the background. I had no idea queens was so far from downtown, I have no concept of how large NYC is.

I was curious so I played with stuff and if you went from the southern tip of Staten Island to near the northern edge of the Bronx it would be about 70 km if you stayed in NYC city limits the whole time. If you started driving east from Staten Island on the southern side of Long Island, you wouldn't hit a significant break in urban development until around Islip ~110 km away.

Hamilton and Oshawa are about 130 km apart. I expect there are places (at least arguably) in metro LA such that the routes between them never left at least suburban development and were 150-200km.

North America is sprawly.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 7:39 AM on May 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

I run regularly in one of Toronto's major cemeteries (Mount Pleasant). It's quiet, the paths are well maintained, and there's lots of grass and trees. It's basically awesome.

Being reminded of death is a little spooky at times, but it's not as if we're less likely to become dead if we never think about it.
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 9:31 AM on May 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

One of DC's important cemeteries, St. Paul's Rock Creek, constitutes part of the eastern boundary of our neighborhood. It's one of those quasi-public open spaces where they ask you to be respectful but they don't, say, ban running. Periodically that means there will be a listserv flareup where somebody complains about runners, but it's quiet and open and I'm pretty sure the dead don't care. The church's web site says it "functions as both cemetery and public park."

My one complaint about it is that they keep the gates on the neighborhood side locked, and the entrance is the farthest possible corner from our house. If I want to include it in my walks, I have to walk around half the border before I can get in. South of the cemetery and church land is the Armed Forces Retirement Home, the grounds of which are home to President Lincoln's Cottage, and which also only has one gate open to the public. So: lots of green space nominally open to the public, but with practical limits on how useful it actually is as a public space. Mmmm, quasi.
posted by fedward at 10:55 AM on May 10, 2018

I'm a pastor and I once served a parish where the cemetery was behind my house, within view of the kitchen sink. My wife could watch graveside services from inside the parsonage.

I thought this might come in handy someday when someone shows up to date one of my daughters, so I can casually mention that I have buried people in my backyard.
posted by 4ster at 12:50 PM on May 10, 2018 [5 favorites]

I love cemeteries. When I was little, my grandmother lived across the street from one. I mostly enjoyed it because the surrounding brick wall was the perfect balance of high and narrow enough that I got a kick out of walking it rather than the sidewalk and low and wide enough that she would let me.

Then later I went to Ole Miss, where there is a tradition of "drinking with Faulkner". Which mostly consists of drinking whisky and then pouring some in his general vicinity. That cemetery is not a very nice smelling place in the rain. But it was a popular spot, and sometimes we'd go even when we weren't drinking, just to run around in the dark playing hide and seek, or sit around in the dark telling ghost stories (we did not do crimes, except maybe technically it was a trespassing crime to be there at night, but the one night a cop came by, he just told us to keep it down).

Then yet later when I lived in DC our street ended in a side gate into a cemetery that was only open on Sundays, so practically it was a dead end. Which meant we were easily the quietest street in our neighborhood, and when we'd sit in the back room we had a lovely view of tree and lawn.

Now we live outside of Boston, and there's practically a cemetery every other block. And they're all beautiful and different and lovely and peaceful to go walking in.
posted by solotoro at 12:57 PM on May 10, 2018

Man, I really hate graveyards. Not because I'm scared of any magical stuff, but just because it seems like a really shitty use of land, that culturally, becomes basically void lands for eternity. Everyone thinks their loved ones bones and corpses are so special and must remain there undisturbed forever because of bad reasons. I guess the hubris of the dead also annoys me. The dead shouldn't get a vote or a place.
posted by GoblinHoney at 1:36 PM on May 10, 2018

UCLA's grad student apartments are right next to the massive LA WWI veterans' cemetery.

The cemetery is a beautiful spot of greenery bounded by the 405, the Brutalist federal buildings across Wilshire, UCLA, and Sunset Blvd. Perhaps obviously, it is nearly closed to new burials.

I heard a few comments from friends who were weirded out by the view of the cemetery when I moved in to my apartment. For me, like the author of this piece and commenters here, the green space functioned as exactly that and I appreciated having it seeing as I was living in the midst of the city.

I was driving by the cemetery the day soon-to-be-President Obama gave a fiery speech on race that moved me to tears as I listened to the radio while stopped in traffic. I was also driving by it the day Michael Jackson died at the hospital a few blocks away. I spent more than one night staring out at it hoping for the magic job to appear as I neared graduation.

And I was comforted by the memory of it when we buried my grandmother in another, newer veterans' cemetery a hundred miles south. I hope that newer cemetery will in time have its own apartment dwellers to appreciate it.
posted by librarylis at 3:05 PM on May 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

If you haven’t really listened to Sara Bareilles’ song “Chasing the Sun” and you liked this article, your soul will be nourished.
posted by beckybakeroo at 7:11 PM on May 10, 2018