Quogue Cemetery eyed for historic registers

Quogue Cemetery, laid out in the 1750s, was nominated Friday for placement on both the New York State and National Registers of Historic Places.

In making the recommendation, the New York State Board for Historic Preservation said, "The cemetery preserves historically significant grave monuments associated with Quogue's founding fathers and their descendants as well as excellent examples of funerary art."

The board acted on a recommendation submitted in April by Zach Studenroth, town historian of Southampton. The cemetery is at 58 Lamb Ave.

"The Quogue Cemetery, founded in the mid-eighteenth century and associated with the settlement patterns of Southampton Town, is the resting place of many of Quogue's earliest settlers and their descendants whose headstones and related burial practices embodied the characteristics of the period and the region," Studenroth wrote in his submission.

"While purchased nearly a century earlier, the Quogue settlement did not receive its own burial ground until the mid-eighteenth century when the local population had grown large enough to require it," the submission said.

It also noted, "Many of the settlers and their descendants, all of whom are associated with this early satellite community, are interred at the Quogue Cemetery. Thus, the site is historically significant of the founding and evolution of the community."

Properties listed on the state and national registers can be eligible for state and federal grants and tax credits. They also can be saved from demolition for federal construction projects.

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Among the 17 nominations statewide is The First Presbyterian Church of Newtown, a Gothic Revival-style church at 54-05 Seabury St. in Elmhurst, Queens, which was completed in 1895 and moved in 1924 to accommodate the widening of Queens Boulevard.

It is rare for properties to not be listed on the registers once they are nominated, a state spokesman said.