Room with a view

When looking for a place to live, there are quiet neighborhoods and then there are “quiet” neighborhoods.

As in dead quiet.

In New Jersey’s redevelopment money-grab, it seems, there is no location too problematic to build on. Exhibit A – The Rail, a new 143-unit high rise progressing in Bound Brook, adjacent to the Old Presbyterian Graveyard.

The luxury apartment building on Hamilton Street will have all of the modern conveniences while enabling its tenants to also look into the distant past. On certain sides, gravestones from the cemetery – dating back to the 1700s and 1800s – are literally right outside the window.

Construction of the six-story complex is part of the massive downtown redevelopment effort that will have added a couple thousand new apartments when finished. One published report said the building, located up the street from the Brook Arts Center, will be completed later this year.

When building next to a cemetery, some might ask, “What were they thinking?” The answer is obvious. If there’s an old building that can be replaced with a new high rise, there’s profit to be made.

Not all will be dissuaded from living next to the Bound Brook gravesites. On a recent Sunday afternoon, a woman was checking out gravestones in the historic cemetery. She was asked by Inside – Middlesex if she’d be spooked by renting an apartment right next door.

“It wouldn’t bother me,” the woman said. “But that’s me, I’m weird. I mean, I’m spending my day walking around a cemetery.”

The cemetery’s remaining grave markers are mostly flat stones laid into the ground’s surface. A few, more elaborate markers include obelisks with engraved birth and death dates of the deceased, Biblical verses or other sayings.

According to online sources, 40 Revolutionary War veterans are known to be buried in the Old Presbyterian Graveyard.

In 2017, a report on the graveyard’s history was compiled by the Somerset County Library System of New Jersey, which oversees the Bound Brook Library. The library is also adjacent to the cemetery. The graveyard was started by the Bound Brook Presbyterian Church. Its original house of worship and a second version were located nearby on Main Street. The second building was damaged by flooding and a fire.

The cemetery’s earliest graves may have had wooden markers that did not withstand the passage of time, the report states. Other graves may not have been marked.

The true number of people buried in the graveyard may not be known. Research has led to the identification of nearly 700 people who were buried there. The report notes that a property the size of the graveyard might have accommodated twice that many.

The oldest surviving stone is that of Catherine Read, who passed in 1760, the infant daughter of a Presbyterian Church pastor. The graveyard was begun in the churchyard in roughly 1725 and remained active for about 175 years. BBPC opened its second cemetery on Mountain Avenue in 1864. Burials in the old graveyard subsequently tailed off.

BBPC constructed its new house of worship at the corner of Mountain and Union avenues in 1896.

Reminder

Subscribe to Inside – Middlesex. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. It is absolutely free.