Forest Park Cemetery Tour

After a short hiatus from any blog posts, due to unexpected things that life holds in store for us. I am now playing catch-up on writing about events and other topics that I planned on delving into.

Forest Park receiving tomb

Last Saturday afternoon was the yearly Forest Park cemetery tour. It was led by Brunswick town historian Sharon Zankel . She mentioned that after ten years of hosting this event that this afternoon's tour might be the final tour. Although the day was a little chilly, there were over 50 attendees, including myself. This year was my first tour of the cemetery. Sharon began the tour with a welcome and an informative talk about the history of the cemetery and stated that this year's tour was dedicated and in memory of Edmund Dodge. Ed was a fellow cemetery enthusiast who researched, found, and photographed old abandoned Rensselaer county cemeteries. Mr. Dodge passed away while doing what he enjoyed most; discovering a long forgotten cemetery. Another project a couple of weeks earlier at the New Mount Ida Cemetery was also completed in Ed Dodge's name. That project will be the focus of my next blog entry.

Sharon discussed how the cemetery was created in the late 1890s by a group of wealthy Troy business men. The cemetery began with 220 acres and was designed by RPI graduated Garnet Baltimore. The goal of the cemetery was to imitate the "rural cemetery" movement from decades earlier. 

Enlarged map of cemetery layout

The cemetery financially fell on hard times filing for bankruptcy numerous times. The cemetery board also agreed to sell 200 acres of its undeveloped land to the Troy Country Club to help stay solvent. Ornately created shares of stock in Forest Park were also sold. An example of a stock certificate is below.

Stock certificate for Forest Park

As the tour began we walked to the famous headless statue at the Hollister lot where the head of the angel is missing. Horror stories about bleeding tombstones surround this moment. Vandals damaged the momument years ago as they have ruined other momuments in the cemetery also.

Headless Hollister momument

As we circled through the cemetery stopping at various lots; the tour ended at the formerly ornate receiving tomb which is now in ruins. The building was errected at a cost of $90,000 if I remember correctly. After the cemetery fell into disrepair and became overgrown and the receiving tomb vandalized; the building, which originally had a copper dome roof which was removed and scrapped by theives. The tour concluded with the rise of urban legends and ghost stories about the cemetery which was interesting. Below are photos of the ruins today.