The stretch where Pinelawn Road turns into Wellwood Avenue on New York’s Long Island is known to locals as Cemetery Row. For 3 1/2 miles, the four-lane road is lined with sweeping, manicured lawns with separate entrances to eight cemeteries set back from the street. Comprising 2,300 acres, almost three times as much land as New York City’s Central Park, it’s the largest contiguous area devoted to burials in the United States.
The business district in Cemetery Row has a power plant, a commuter rail station and a suburban-style commercial strip surrounded by burial grounds. Large signs advertise marble slabs, and you can see smoke wafting up from a crematory. Commercial and religious establishments with names such as St. Charles Monuments, Eternal Memorials and Star of David Memorial Chapel alternate with Kerensky Florist, Michelle’s Florist and Chicky’s Florist, not to mention two gas stations and the Barnwell House of Tires.
The oldest of the cemeteries here, in Farmingdale about 20 miles east of New York City’s eastern border, is Pinelawn Memorial Park. At 839 acres, it’s the second largest nonmilitary cemetery in the country. During the dark early days of the pandemic, when local cemeteries struggled to keep up with the region’s wave of COVID-19 casualties,
— source propublica.org | Carson Kessler | Jul 25, 2022