Maple Grove Cemetery opens ‘green’ center

On Friday, June 13 - yes, the date was chosen on purpose - The Maple Grove Cemetery in Kew Gardens celebrated the completion of its new green center where the public will be able to enjoy concerts or hold conferences and workshops.
The entire community, as well as the families of the deceased, will be able to rent the sleek 18,000-square foot center for various purposes. This is an extension of Maple Grove’s philosophy that besides being a spiritual place for grieving, the cemetery should be a place of joy and beauty open to the public, explained Maple Grove Cemetery CEO Linda Mayo-Perez.
“The cemetery is really for the living - they bury the people, they come back and leave flowers and tokens. We decided that we can go a step further in a way that allows the living to participate and share,” Mayo-Perez explained. Cemeteries, therefore, are not macabre places but rather venues where you can contemplate and celebrate life, Mayo-Perez said.
Maple Grove’s brown granite center of minimalist design features an underground memorial room for cremated remains and a spacious three-level lobby with big windows overlooking the park-like 65-acre cemetery.
One of the lobby windows is made of stained glass featuring a river with people who are wading in it past tall buildings rising out of the water.
The center also features a small round stone labyrinth at the entrance. “It’s an offer to bring back balance to our lives,” said Ariane Burgess, the labyrinth’s designer. Walking regularly the winding path of a labyrinth helps the brain achieve balance between the right and left hemisphere, producing a meditation-like effect, Burgess explained.
Maple Grove’s center, which will open shortly after seven years of construction, is also green. This means that all the materials it was made of are 100-percent natural and it is a water- and energy-efficient structure, explained the center’s architect, Peter Gisolfi.
Maple Grove wanted to have a permanent building and the best way to do that was to go green, explained Gisolfi.
“This is the cemetery of the future,” said Mayo-Perez. But the concept of having a cemetery open to the public even for fun activities comes from the 1830s when this lot was not a cemetery but a piece of farmland used as a park, Mayo-Perez explained. “We’re reaching back to our history,” she said.
The 133-year-old cemetery, on 127-15 Kew Gardens Road, has been open to the public since 2001. During the day, anybody can enter and sit on the benches.