Grove Street Cemetery

The Grove Street Cemetery is the First Chartered Burial Ground in the United States. Built in 1796, the cemetery spans 18 acres on the east edge of the Dixwell neighborhood and abuts the Yale University campus. Its Egyptian Revivalist gate draws immediate attention from passersby, which bears the ominous inscription “The Dead Shall Be Raised.” The cemetery's gridded layout symbolically echoes the nine-square grid of the city found in downtown New Haven around the green and functionally organizes the graves of hundreds of notable figures, many of whom are affiliated with New Haven and Yale University.