July 26, 2024
Provided Image/Brandon Zimmerman
Mount Vernon Cemetery is for sale and volunteer groups say the space is completely overgrown.
For $1 million, you could become the next owner of Philly's Mount Vernon Cemetery — the final resting place for a number of prominent Philadelphians, including the Drew and Barrymore acting dynasties who are ancestors of Drew Barrymore.
While there's a Zillow listing for the 26.8-acre graveyard, which was founded in 1856, the move to put it on the market is part of a larger effort to preserve the space.
In 2017, Joseph Murphy, who inherited the cemetery, started searching for a new owner with the help of University of Pennsylvania professor Aaron Wunsch. After rejections from other local cemeteries including Laurel Hill, preservationists and community leaders founded the Mt. Vernon Cemetery Conservation Company, or MVCCC, a nonprofit to try to take ownership and oversee care of the property.
Thaddeus Squire, volunteer manager of the MVCCC, said Murphy was an "absentee landlord," letting the cemetery become overgrown and causing issues during the process to change ownership to the nonprofit. As a result, the Philadelphia Community Development Coalition and law firm Orphanides & Toner filed a petition to remove Murphy as the owner of the property under the Abandoned and Blighted Property Conservatorship Act.
Plots haven't been sold at Mount Vernon Cemetery since the 1960s, so the only new burials are from those who purchased theirs over 50 years ago. It has become so overgrown that many can't even visit their relatives, with Squire saying one family had to bring in a front-end loader to be able to put a coffin in the ground.
For Squire, that's a sad reality for a property that has the potential to be a green space for the community, especially one that brushes up against the largely Black and Brown neighborhoods of Strawberry Mansion and Allegheny West.
"I see the potential for this property with the neighboring communities to be a real kind of urban lung," he said. "I see the fact that that hasn't happened as a real kind of miscarriage of social justice."
PCDC became the property's conservator in 2021, giving it temporary ownership and control. Now, the property has been listed as part of the court process because it needs time on the public market before the MVCCC can become the default buyer. If no one buys it, the MVCCC will be able to purchase the property from the coalition for $1 with the help of a plot trust to reimburse PCDC's costs.
The city canceled all liens and liabilities against Mount Vernon Cemetery, including about $1 million in tax liens, lowering the costs to get it up and running again. To prove it could be a good steward of the property, the MVCCC has about $15,000 from the Family and Friends of Mt. Vernon Cemetery group, which would cover closing costs, and another $50,000 pledge from an unnamed source. But it needs another $250,000 for repairs to the gatehouse and fencing, and to remove the invasive vegetation.
Squire said he doesn't think another buyer will show up because Mount Vernon Cemetery can't be commercially developed, so it seems likely that the nonprofit will take over. But he said he'd be open to another buyer stepping up if they were interested in proper restoration, though they'd have to go through the same court approval process.
"We're kind of the court of last resort, and we're willing to be that solution if that's what's necessary," Squire said. "But if another steward comes to the table, our goal has always been just to get it in good hands."
For the MVCCC, the next steps after purchasing the property will be positioning the cemetery on more of a public green space path as opposed to a historical preservation one. After engaging the surrounding communities, the nonprofit would come up with a master plan for the site.
The MVCCC could sell any unused plots, though Squire said it would likely focus on columbariums, an above-ground structure for ashes, and eco-friendly burials. The vision is to develop a space for recreation, jogging and dog walking, similar to Laurel Hill and Mount Moriah cemeteries, with the gates open during the day and closed at night.
Volunteers (above) have held nearly weekly cleanups to remove vines and invasive species from the 170-year-old cemetery.
Provided Image/Brandon Zimmerman
But engaging public support has been difficult for volunteers. Without having sold any plots over the past 50 years, most visitors are there for graves of family members long gone, so there's not a lot of new support to drum up. It was also a white-only cemetery that's currently surrounded by largely non-white neighborhoods.
"We're kind of plunked right in the middle here of East Falls and Strawberry Mansion and neither area of the city wants to lay claim to us or know anything about us. ... We have no delusions that we are going to be able to clean up this cemetery ourselves," said Brandon Zimmerman, volunteer coordinator of the Family and Friends of Mt. Vernon group.
Many also believe it's been abandoned, Zimmerman said, because of its condition. Volunteers started regular cleanups in February 2022 and were able to create a space to hold a fall festival in November 2023 with about 300 visitors. Zimmerman and the MVCCC would like to get the property to a place where it can hold regular programming, including tours of prominent graves. A full restoration, though, is a delicate balance.
"Why would you come in here and eradicate this microcosm, just so that the living can come in occasionally to see the dead?" Zimmerman said. "I know that sounds very harsh, but there has to be a happy medium that allows the human component but still allows the natural component to still exist in some shape or form in here."
