Manhattan's only surviving 17th-century structure: a pocket cemetery from 1683 in Chinatown, where Revolutionary War patriots and a 20-year-old doctor who died treating yellow fever patients lie behind a locked iron gate.
55-57 St. James Place, New York, NY 10038
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Exterior visible from street at all times at no charge. Interior by appointment (Memorial Day ceremony held annually).
Access
Wheelchair OK
Elevated above street level behind an iron gate; the cemetery is viewable from St. James Place sidewalk
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1683 · Oldest Jewish cemetery in New York City; first burial 1683 · Oldest surviving 17th-century structure in Manhattan · National Register of Historic Places (1980) · Burial site of Revolutionary War patriots and Rev. Gershom Mendes Seixas · Dr. Walter Jonas Judah interred here—died age 20 treating yellow fever patients in 1798
Congregation Shearith Israel, organized in New York by Sephardic Jewish settlers in 1654, purchased a plot on what is now St. James Place in 1682. The first recorded burial—Benjamin Bueno de Mesquita, a relative of the purchaser Joseph Bueno de Mesquita—took place in 1683. The congregation used the site until 1833, a span of 150 years during which the cemetery absorbed successive waves of yellow fever epidemics, a smallpox outbreak, and the casualties of the Revolutionary War.
The burial ground originally extended from Chatham Square to Madison Street. Development progressively reduced it: the congregation sold parcels in 1823 and 1829, and when St. James Place was cut through the grounds in 1855, 256 burials were relocated to the congregation's other cemeteries on West 21st Street and in Brooklyn. What remains is a compact, elevated plot containing approximately 100 headstones and above-ground tombs.
Among the notable burials is Reverend Gershom Mendes Seixas (1745-1816), considered the first American-born Jewish spiritual leader, who gave prayers at George Washington's first inauguration. Also interred here is Dr. Walter Jonas Judah, who died in 1798 at age 20; Judah had been one of the first native-born Jews to attend an American medical school and chose to remain in New York during the yellow fever epidemic to treat patients rather than flee with most of the city's population.
The cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 and is recognized as the only surviving 17th-century structure in Manhattan. It is maintained by Congregation Shearith Israel. The iron gate is generally locked; the interior is accessible by appointment and on Memorial Day, when an annual ceremony honors the Revolutionary War veterans interred here.
Sources
The First Shearith Israel Graveyard has not generated a documented ghost tradition. No paranormal investigators, ghost-tour operators, or local press have published accounts of apparitions or unexplained activity specifically at this site.
What makes it a dark-history destination is the weight of what the headstones document. The yellow fever epidemic of 1798 appears across the inscriptions—New York lost roughly one in twelve residents that summer—and among those interred is Dr. Walter Jonas Judah, who died at twenty while treating patients when nearly everyone with means had left the city. The Revolutionary War veterans buried here died in a conflict that turned much of lower Manhattan into a military occupation zone.
The cemetery's physical character reinforces the uncanny: it sits elevated above street level behind an iron gate on a block in Chinatown that has changed beyond recognition around it. The headstones are in Hebrew, Spanish, and Portuguese—languages that reflect the Sephardic Jewish community of 17th-century New York, a world that has largely vanished. The American Jewish Historical Society and Atlas Obscura both document it as one of the most historically compressed sites in the city.
View the small elevated cemetery from the St. James Place sidewalk. Approximately 100 headstones and above-ground tombs in Hebrew, Spanish, and Portuguese are visible through the iron gate. The plot dates to 1683 and is the only 17th-century structure surviving in Manhattan.
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