Designated in 1634, DNBG is one of America’s oldest cultural landscapes and heritage sites. Nearly four hundred years old, its L-shaped property contains 3.19 acres of green space and approximately 2,600 surviving grave markers that reside latent in Uphams Corner.[1] Formerly Cemetery Corner, Uphams Corners' commercial district surrounds DNBG at the junction of Dudley Street, Stoughton Street, and Columbia Road in Dorchester, Boston. Challenges that face this unique culturally-enriched community include poverty, youth violence, housing, and an increase in single-parent families. This creates great demand for developmental landscapes that bridge economic, cultural, and generational boundaries, such as Dorchester North Burying Ground.[2]
Throughout New England, historic municipally-owned burying grounds often suffer neglect and under-utilization, despite their significant value as cultural landscapes and open spaces situated in the heart of cities. Since they are full and inactive, they no longer produce income and have difficulty competing for budget funding.[3] As more cemeteries become full, they will shift from private to public ownership, and continue to face funding hurdles. For example, between 2003 and 2008, 11 abandoned private cemeteries in New York City were legally transitioned into the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation.[4] OPEN UPHAMS researches how creative adaptation and participation, through educational programs and cultural events, may thrive within inactive burying grounds, like DNBG. We believe these public spaces are open resources for living communities to learn from the past and celebrate the present.
SOURCES: [1] “Report and Inventory Volume I Dorchester North Burying Ground.” Boston: Historic Burying Grounds Initiative, 1986: 1, 18-19. [2] Jones, Tamecia and Rudy Mitchell. “Uphams Corner Neighborhood Briefing Document.” Boston: Youth Violence Systems Project, 2008: 9-19. [3] “Preservation Guide for Municipally Owned Historic Burial Grounds and Cemeteries, Third Edition.” Massachusetts: Department of Conservation and Recreation and Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, 2009: 12. [4] Harnick, Peter & Aric Merolli. “Cemeteries Alive: Graveyards are resurging as green spaces for the public.” Landscape Architecture. December 2010.
After visiting a Boston cemetery, Englishman Henry Arthur Bright wrote in the 1850s, “cemeteries here are all the rage; people lounge in them and use them (as their tastes are inclined) for walking, making love, weeping, sentimentalizing, and everything in short.” The United States owes the invention of public park commons, like Central Park in New York, to the inspiration of cemeteries where visitors flocked in search for calm respites away from increasingly industrialized cities.
The Portugese word “saudade” describes remembrance of people, places, and experiences that trigger revival of past joys through the present. OPEN UPHAMS is founded on the hypothesis that Dorchester North Burying Ground can embody communal “saudade” in the heart of Uphams Corner. As a neighborhood, Uphams Corner includes many cultures – Cape Verdean, Haitian, African American, Caucasian, Dominican, and Vietnamese - as well as diverse generational and socioeconomic groups.
By utilizing historic maps, inventory records, print publications, and online resources (i.e. DorchesterAtheneum.org), OPEN UPHAMS explores physical and digital mechanisms for reclaiming the often forgotten Dorchester North Burying Ground as a destination for sparking revival of past joys through the present. OPEN UPHAMS investigates methods of utilizing memorials, storytelling, community participation, and tactical urbanism to generate new interest in DNBG and expand the community’s sense of belonging and usage of its currently invisible open space. Hoping to shift attitudes surrounding limitations of this public terrain, the OPEN UPHAMS reframes burying grounds as valuable open spaces for catalyzing social, cultural, and economic community development.
LINKS: Theatre Image, SouzaPalooza Image, Lanterns Image, Green-Wood Cemetery, Guitare Player Image