Maplewood Cemetery holds the graves of many names that are familiar to Duke—Few, Blackwell, Southgate and Wannamaker, among others. There are even members of the Duke family themselves, buried in a stately mausoleum at the cemetery's center.
But alongside the many prestigious names are rundown roadways, tombstones that have fallen over and partially exposed coffins, along with other ruins. Beechwood Cemetery, a historically black burial ground located on Fayetteville Street, is in no better shape.
There are hundreds of acres of history preserved within Maplewood and Beechwood. But the cemeteries have become endangered over the years as a result of city government’s minimal upkeep of the cemeteries, and it is unclear how the city will be able to fund reforms.
Years of ‘deferred maintenance’
Though the General Services Department has preserved and managed Maplewood and Beechwood—Durham’s only two public cemeteries for more than 140 years—recent appeals for increased funding of necessary reforms have gone unheeded.
“It’s just a matter of deferred maintenance over the years,” General Services Director Joel Reitzer, Jr. said in a February report to the Durham City Council,prior to introducing Dan Jewell, the city’s contracted landscape architect.
Jewell presented to the Council a preliminary study of the conditions at both cemeteries—prioritizing reforms which address compliance with public safety codes, the maintenance of equipment at risk of failure, upgrades to systems that may improve facility operations and energy efficiency and effectiveness.
Among these reforms are efforts to renovate deteriorating roadways, stormwater systems, burial areas and retaining walls, as well as plans to implement erosion control protocol and to decrease the deficiency in adequate storage facilities.
The cost of the reforms recommended by Jewell, some of which are nearly 50 years behind schedule, is an estimated $5.6 million—$4,791,500 at Maplewood with $2,000,000 alone allotted toward deferred maintenance, and $931,950 at Beechwood with $305,000 allotted toward deferred maintenance.
But the funds that the council plans to use for the cemeteries' maintenance do not have enough revenue to cover reforms of such a large scale.
Dwindling allocations
“Some funding will occur through the city’s capital improvement program and some from the cemeteries’ perpetual care fund,” said Cedar Glasgow, the city’s cemeteries administrator, in an email June 18.
Allocations to both funds have lessened over the past few years, however.
The council did not allocate money to the capital improvement program in the 2013-2014 fiscal year due to an inability to properly estimate the cost of implemented reforms until the assessment of the cemeteries was completed this past February. Currently, the council has chosen not to allocate funding for the program through the 2018-2019 fiscal year.
There remains nearly $290,000 in funding for the program from previous budget allocations, however, $240,000 of which will likely be used in the 2014-2015 fiscal year.
“We would anticipate making a recommendation for construction funding for implementation in fiscal year 2015-2016,” Glasgow explained.
The cemeteries’ perpetual care fund likewise suffers from dwindling allocations.
The council appropriated $244,581 and $100,000 to the fund in the 2011-2012 fiscal year and the 2012-2013 fiscal year, respectively, but only $6,000 in the 2013-2014 fiscal year.
Last year, $100,000 and $50,000 were acquired from what remains of the cemeteries’ perpetual care fund in order to finance repairs to stormwater systems as well as Jewell’s preliminary study, respectively. Glasgow maintains that the study will be able to provide an estimate of future funding requests.
“The goal [of the study] was to investigate and analyze infrastructure and facilities, then make recommendations for priority repairs or improvements with associated cost estimates so that the appropriate funding amount could be requested,” Glasgow explained.
Stephen Schewel, a visiting professor of public policy and member of the Durham City Council, added that the city administration is actively pursuing a long-term strategy of addressing the recommendations outlined in the study.
A concerning strategy
The council’s long-term strategy concerns Wendy Hillis, executive director of Preservation Durham, a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to protect Durham’s historic architecture and built environment.
Her organization issues an annual Places in Peril list to advocate on behalf of community properties which are historically significant, actively imperiled and able to benefit from increased public awareness.
Maplewood and Beechwood Cemeteries are included on the list of this year's endangered properties.
“In the case of Maplewood and Beechwood, it was brought to our attention [that] there’s been a lot of deferred maintenance of things that need to be done at the cemeteries for a long time,” Hillis said.
Though Hillis said she appreciates the council’s efforts to address the deferred maintenance of the cemeteries over the long-term, she hopes to increase awareness of the importance of providing short-term funding for the recommended reforms.
“They have a budget line-item for cemeteries, but it’s just kind of on-going maintenance,” she continued. “It’s nowhere near enough to take care of what they have in this report.”
Preservation Durham supports immediately and fully funding the reforms. In order to advocate for such funding, Hillis offered members of the City Council—and the rest of the Durham community—a tour of Maplewood Cemetery, which commenced alongside Julian Carr’s gravesite.
“Being able to have ongoing discussions with city council members and county commissioners, being able to just have a conversation and say, ‘Hey, this is important,’” is the best way to ensure that local officials work toward preserving the cemeteries, Hillis said.
She said that the endangered legacies of the individuals interred at Maplewood and Beechwood are “things that we can do something about."
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