The Freedom Lots encompasses seven lots, where 1,321 Black Americans are interred.
In 1847, burial lot 3412 was designated for use by the Colored Orphan Asylum of Manhattan, a refuge and care facility that provided housing, education, and support to Black children. Soon thereafter, several additional lots for adults and children were established in the same area.
These lots were part of the Cemetery’s “public lots,” which offered affordable graves but accommodated only small monuments without foundations. Over time, many stones became weathered, fallen, broken, or had sunken entirely into the earth.
In 2017, a group of seven NYC high school students from the Williamsburg High School of Architecture and Design and the Mather Building Arts & Craftsmanship High School worked to restore the lots. Funded in part by the World Monuments Fund, the students worked with Green-Wood’s restoration department to restore the area, uncovering twelve missing monuments and restoring seventy-one monuments in all. They also used census and Cemetery records to research and document the people interred there, including Civil War soldier John Munroe. At the project’s conclusion, the students chose to designate the area “The Freedom Lots.”
Lots 88, 3412, 3413, 3414, 7472, 9464, and 9932.
