Plot prices soar as New York runs out of space

For the dead, however, virtually no amount of money will secure a final resting place in the heart of a city that is fast running out of graveyard space.

And in the parts of town where a burial plot is still available, the cost has, in some cases, more than tripled in less than a decade; above-ground mausoleums can fetch upward of 2 million.

Cemeteries are scrambling to create more space, and as plot prices have soared, the number of cremations has also risen, with a quarter of New Yorkers choosing the less expensive alternative.

One affected cemetery is Trinity in Washington Heights, the last operating graveyard in Manhattan, which has now stopped selling plots, offering burial only in the most "extraordinary circumstances", or to people with long-held reservations.

The largest Jewish graveyard in Brooklyn, Washington Cemetery, ran out of land in the winter after tearing up roads and pathways to utilise every cubic inch of ground. Evergreens and Cypress Hills, also in Brooklyn, may sprawl, but not enough, and dozens of smaller cemeteries spread across the five boroughs are squeezed, too.

The city's largest Catholic cemetery, Calvary in Queens, is close to capacity. And even the most famous of them all, Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, has only about five more years before it will be forced to stop selling plots.

More than 50 years have passed since a major cemetery was established within the city, and no new burial grounds are planned. But New Yorkers continue to die, some 60,000 a year.

Accordingly, per square foot, burial plots in centrally located cemeteries rival the most expensive real estate in the city. A private mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx can easily cost more than 600 per square foot.

Demand remains so high, however, that some cemetery managers have received requests from relatives to exhume their loved ones - so that their plot can be sold off.

"We have people who would like to disinter Mom and Dad and sell the graves back to make some money," said Richard Fishman, the director of the New York State Division of Cemeteries.

There are state laws limiting the profits on resold graves, but the fact people would be willing to go to such lengths, Fishman said, illustrates just how valuable burial plots have become.

Other major urban areas have taken measures to alleviate similar log jams.Singapore and Sydney, among others, offer "limited tenure", cemetery-speak for digging up bodies after a certain amount of time so that the plot can be reused.

New York City is not now contemplating graveyard evictions, although the state did pass a law several years ago that allows cemeteries to take over empty plots bought more than 75 years ago if the owner cannot be reached.

Maple Grove in Queens has already reclaimed more than 150 graves, and many other cemeteries are taking similar action. In fact, cemetery operators have begun to resort to the kind of creative use of space that many a Manhattan landlord might envy - squeezing coffins into every barren inch, narrowing paths, stacking coffins nine-deep.

"We are apparently one of the first that ran out of burial space," said Dominick Tarantino, who runs Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn, "but the other ones, I don't think they are too far behind me."

From his office, the rumble of the F train can be heard as it slices through the graveyard. Look in any direction from the elevated platform at the Bay Parkway stop, and the crowding is evident, with graves pushing up against car body shops, apartment buildings and busy intersections

"We have had bribes offered, sure," Tarantino said. "But we have nothing to be bribed for. We have no room."

The cemetery has made a bid on an adjacent house. Even though the owner is asking a hefty sum — 0.9m — for a small house that sits on less than an acre of land, it makes economic sense for the cemetery to buy it.

The price for a plot before the cemetery ran out of them was 7,700. New plots would very likely be even more expensive. "Any little piece of land, we are really getting a premium for," Tarantino said. And when he says little piece of land, he means that literally.

Despite the bulging waistlines that have necessitated bigger casket sizes across the country, Washington Cemetery is strict: no caskets more than 26 inches wide. "They got to squeeze them into the box," head groundskeeper Charlie Anderson said.

Now that an end to plot sales is in sight, Green-Wood is seeking to transform its image, according to Richard J. Moylan, its president.

The graveyard charges admission for guided tours, giving people a chance to saunter through time among the tombstones of the notable and the notorious. The hope is that it will become much like Pre Lachaise cemetery in Paris, which is a magnet for tourists.

For now, though, most city cemeteries are not so much concerned with drawing the living as finding room for the dead.