2012 Theses Master's

The Old World, the New World, and the World to Come: Interpreting Bayside Cemetery

Mittelman, Esther Suzanne

Over the past several decades, Bayside Cemetery, in Ozone Park, Queens, has suffered from grievous mistreatment, vandalism, and neglect. Attempts at restoration have largely fallen flat, resulting in cycles of "clean-up" and deterioration. As a Jewish cemetery serving a very particular historic constituency that is no longer viable, Bayside has had trouble maintaining the kind of public relevance that engenders a successful preservation. Nevertheless, Bayside is emblematic of a specific, often underrepresented moment in American Jewish history: the unprecedented, large-scale mid-19th century emigration of worldly "German" Jews to the United States, and their enduring cultural influence on subsequent generations of their co-religionists in the New World. As such, the site deserves to be saved. This thesis seeks to make the case for interpreting Bayside as a means toward preservation. To that end, it establishes the significance of Bayside Cemetery through an exploration of its physical fabric, locates the Jewish cemetery within the canon of American cemetery interpretation, and proposes a plan for the interpretation of the site for the public.