Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York, United States, is a non-profit, non-sectarian burying ground of about 90 acres (36 ha). It is the final resting place of numerous famous figures, including Washington Irving, who was a cofounder of the establishment. Incorporated in 1849 as Tarrytown Cemetery, it was renamed Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in 1865. The cemetery is contiguous with, but separate from, the Burial Ground of the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow, which was a setting for Washington Irving's famous story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The Rockefeller family estate, Kykuit, whose grounds abut Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, contains the private Rockefeller cemetery, which is located behind a high fence at the north end of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Sleepy Hollow Cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.
History and design In 1847, the New York State Legislature passed the Rural Cemetery Act, which authorized commercial burial grounds in New York. The law led to the burial of human remains becoming a commercial business for the first time, replacing the practice of burying the dead in churchyards or on private farmland. Almost immediately after that, a group of prominent local residents, headed by author Washington Irving and Capt. Jacob Storm initiated the building of a modern burial ground in the Tarrytown area, as the Burying Ground at the Old Dutch Church no longer had adequate burial space for the growing community. Tarrytown Cemetery was incorporated on October 29, 1849. On April 11, 1865, it would be officially renamed Sleepy Hollow Cemetery—the name on which Washington Irving had insisted from the beginning, but was initially overruled. The new cemetery began with 39 acres north of the church graveyard, subsequently growing by about 41 acres in 1886 and an additional 10 acres in 1890. It was designed as a garden—or rural—cemetery, a style that was popular in the United States and Europe during the mid-19th century. (Washington Irving was a strong proponent of the garden cemetery movement.) Jim Logan, superintendent of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, writes on his website, Sleepy Hollow Country: "Think of it as the Victorian version of therapeutic landscape architecture—a place where grief could unfold amid natural beauty rather than urban gloom." The building of this type of cemetery involved well-planned walkways and elaborately landscaped plantings of trees and shrubs. The Tarrytown/Sleepy Hollow area, with its rolling hills, old-growth trees, and the gently flowing Pocantico River, was a perfect location for a garden cemetery. Before the widespread development of public parks, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, like other garden cemeteries, provided a place for the public to enjoy outdoor recreation in a park-like setting. In the 21st century, it is still a popular spot for locals to take a nature walk. Names of prominent local families are found on stone-fronted family vaults built into the hillsides in the older section of the cemetery, but most of the burials are family plots with multiple tombstones. In the northern section, on the higher elevations, there are numerous mausoleums and large plots with elaborate monuments of "many New York achievers" of the Gilded Age. The cemetery's historic Hillside Receiving Vault provided essential "cold storage" before the advent of modern steam shovels and backhoes. Built directly into a steep hillside, the solid masonry structure used the earth's natural insulation to hold bodies when the ground was too frozen for burial. It is a contributing structure to the cemetery's 2009 listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The vault gained international fame as the crypt of Barnabas Collins in the 1970 film House of Dark Shadows. No longer used for mass winter storage, it is part of official cemetery tours. Purported "Headless Horseman" cemetery bridge. A popular feature is the cemetery’s rustic bridge over a Pocantico River ravine, near a small waterfall and the river’s natural Cascade Pool. Cemetery superintendent Jim Logan writes: "Visitors have long associated it with the famous bridge from Irving’s tale, though it’s a much later addition to the landscape. Still, there’s something fitting about it—a wooden span over running water, framed by autumn foliage, that captures the atmosphere of Irving’s story even if it wasn’t part of his original inspiration."
Notable monuments
The modest Washington Irving's gravestone (1859) is located in the Irving family plot, where his parents, brothers (including Peter Irving), nephews, and nieces are also buried. According to his nephew and literary assistant, Pierre Munroe Irving, the author had selected the specific place next to his mother when visiting the cemetery several days before his death. Creating a unique literary landmark, the author is buried close to the historic Burying Ground of the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow, where the graves of people who inspired The Legend of Sleepy Hollow characters are located.
The 1926 gravestone index, The Old Dutch Burying Ground of Sleepy Hollow, describes it as follows:
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