By Jared Ebersole in Video 03 Oct 2026

The Burial Ground Beneath Washington Square

Washington Square’s marble arch celebrates a president. Beneath the surrounding park, thousands of earlier New Yorkers remain buried, shaping what the city can build today.

At the foot of Fifth Avenue, Washington Square Arch gives New York a grand entrance to one of its most familiar gathering places. Its marble opening frames the park beyond, turning an ordinary walk into something ceremonial. Yet the monument is only the most visible layer of this landscape. Beneath the surrounding grounds lies a former public cemetery, with thousands of burials still in place.

The arch commemorates George Washington. The cemetery predates it by almost a century. Together, they make Washington Square a place where two forms of public memory occupy the same ground: an elaborate tribute to a president above, and the largely unmarked resting places of early New Yorkers below. The often cited estimate of as many as 20,000 burials concerns the park’s former burial ground, rather than a single grave beneath the arch. New York Public Library

Where it is

Washington Square Arch, at the foot of Fifth Avenue and Washington Square North, Greenwich Village, Manhattan. NYC Parks

The cemetery began in 1797, when the city acquired land here for a potter’s field, a public burial ground serving people without the means or circumstances for burial elsewhere. Yellow fever epidemics added to its population. The New York Public Library identifies outbreaks in 1797, 1798, 1801 and 1803 as major pressures on the cemetery. Its history belongs to a city struggling to accommodate death during repeated crises.

Burial use ended in 1825. Changing the land’s purpose, however, did not mean removing everyone beneath it. The library’s account describes the later conversion without a comprehensive exhumation, drawing on the city’s archaeological assessment. That distinction explains why cemetery history keeps resurfacing during construction: the graves survived the change of use. New York Public Library

The next transformations came quickly. The site became the Washington Military Parade Ground in 1826 and a public park in 1827. Later improvements reshaped its surface again, including a redesign following the creation of the Department of Public Parks in 1870. Each new arrangement made the space more recognizable as a park while leaving an older landscape underneath. NYC Parks history

The arch arrived much later. In 1889, a temporary structure of wood and plaster celebrated the centennial of Washington’s presidential inauguration in New York. Its popularity prompted a citizens’ committee to commission a permanent replacement. Stanford White designed the marble monument using the architectural language of Roman triumphal arches, bringing ceremonial grandeur to the southern end of Fifth Avenue.

Foundations were laid in May 1890. The permanent arch was built between 1890 and 1892, with its formal dedication following on May 4, 1895. Its principal material was Tuckahoe marble. The project reflected the civic ambition associated with the City Beautiful movement: public architecture that could give an American city the stature of European capitals. NYC Parks monument history, NYC Parks park history

Building that statement of civic pride brought workers into contact with the cemetery. In 1890, excavation for the arch’s foundations exposed coffins, skeletons and headstones, including two dated 1803. The discoveries established a pattern that later utility and park projects would repeat: digging into Washington Square could also mean entering someone’s burial place. New York City Cemetery Project

That history became an engineering constraint during the modern park renovation. Archaeologist Joan H. Geismar’s March 2009 field report describes test excavations and a redesign of the fountain’s water holding system to minimize disturbance after burials were found. Archaeology helped determine where infrastructure could fit.

Soil chemistry offered one clue. Bioarchaeologist Thomas Amorosi noted that differences in soil pH could help establish a grave’s limits when encountered. It was a local investigative tool, with limits: one burial nearly 12 feet down surprised the team because a grave shaft was not visible in the surrounding sandy soil.

The protocol called for excavation to stop in a trench where a burial appeared. Intact burials were documented in place, then protected with clean sand, a custom wooden cover and breathable geocloth before backfilling. These measures preserved the remains and marked their position against future disturbance. The process required adapting construction to the cemetery as it was encountered. 2009 archaeological field report

Later work continued to reveal both intact graves and scattered remains. The distinction matters. The Phase 3 report records partial remains representing at least eight people during work from July 2012 to February 2013. Previous disturbance had left some individuals represented by very little skeletal material. Isolated or disturbed bones were sent to Brooklyn College’s archaeology laboratory for analysis after consultation with the Manhattan Medical Examiner’s Office. The record therefore includes preservation in place alongside recovery and study. Phase 3 archaeological report

Occasionally, a name emerged. A headstone discovered in 2009 belonged to James Jackson, a 28-year-old native of County Kildare, Ireland, who died on September 22, 1799. Historical research identified him as a yellow fever victim. No human remains were found associated with his stone, but the inscription restored an individual biography to a place usually discussed through estimates and anonymous bones. New York City Cemetery Project

On March 2, 2021, fragmentary remains recovered during construction between 2008 and 2017 were reinterred in the park. They were placed in a wooden box, five feet below ground, in a planting bed near the Sullivan Street entrance. An engraved paver marks the site and acknowledges the former potter’s field. This was a return of recovered remains, not the relocation of the entire cemetery. The Village Sun

The small marker offers a different encounter with history from the arch. One asks visitors to look upward; the other asks them to notice the ground. Between them lies the continuing responsibility of maintaining a busy public park that is also a burial place. Every fountain pipe, planting bed and excavation belongs to that shared landscape. Washington Square’s past remains physically present, even where there is little on the surface to announce it.