Chapel of the Sisters, Prospect Cemetery

94-02 159th Street | also 158-78 Beaver Road, 94-14 159th Street | Jamaica | built 1857

Open on the map3 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1856

    Hardware merchant Nicholas Ludlum buys three acres to extend Jamaica's old burying ground

    In 1856 Nicholas Ludlum, a wealthy New York City hardware merchant from a long-established Jamaica family, bought the land between the east side of the old graveyard and Prospect Street (today's 159th Street) from the Long Island Rail Road. The three-acre addition held about 10 lots, most of which he sold, and the Long Island Farmer reported his plans to improve the grounds. It moved the cemetery's entrance to Prospect Street.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1857

    Nicholas Ludlum builds the Chapel of the Sisters in memory of his three daughters

    In 1857 Ludlum paid for a small chapel as a memorial to his three daughters, all of whom died young: Cornelia Maria at 13, Mary Cecelia at one, and Mary, the wife of Lewis Cass Jr., the U.S. minister in Rome, at 21. Named the Chapel of the Sisters, it was meant for family burials. The Romanesque Revival chapel is built of random ashlar fieldstone trimmed in light brown sandstone, with gabled porches facing both 159th Street and the graves.

    “Ludlum, at his own expense, had a small chapel erected, as a memorial to his three daughters, each of whom had died at an early age.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1977

    January 11

    Prospect Cemetery and its chapel become a city landmark

    The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated Prospect Cemetery, Jamaica's oldest burial ground, in January 1977. Among its reasons, the commission singled out the fine mid-19th-century chapel as the cemetery's focal point, along with graves of families important to early Queens and the burial ground's link to the old Village of Jamaica.

    “…it contains a fine, mid 19th-century chapel, today a focal point of the cemetery.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Nearby

All 24 buildings with stories in Jamaica