Forgotten and Desecrated New York Cemeteries
Sylvan Cemetery, in Staten Island in the little town of Travis, one of Staten Island's remotest neighborhoods, located on Victory Boulevard near the Davis Wildlife Preserve in the Staten Island Greenbelt. It was formerly called Linoleumville, after a local industry.
The Sylvan Cemetery is full of fascinating old tombstones, rendered beautifully in stone, and horrendously vandalized over the years and yet still, by sick, disrepectful people who tip over stones and scrawl barely legible words and doggerel on and about the resting places of the dead, some of whom played a part in the historic wars fought by the U.S.
The cemetery itself has no sign indicating its name, the name exists now only as a tiny label on a Hagstrom map. A fence encircles the area now, but it does nothing to prevent the constant vandalism from nocturnal incursions by local youth. The beautiful plots and stones are laid waste and are veritably choked off by the overgrowth of weeds and plants and the collection of used drug paraphernalia and trash.
It is just another sad entry in the list of beautiful and historic sites in the great city of New York that have been ravaged by neglect and forgotten by all but a very few.
