As all cemeteries know, land is at a premium. Rural cemeteries typically have the ability to expand with ease but cemeteries that are set up within the cities know that they have a finite amount of land. The famous Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY is such a location with worries of running out of space on their grounds but recently found a bit more.

The Green-Wood Cemetery recently purchased the plots from the Old First Reformed Church that were for the church’s parishioners, who have long since stopped using the land. The church’s cemetery is actually a circular area within Green-Wood Cemetery, a cemetery-within-a-cemetery, that the church had purchased from Green-Wood in 1860. The final sale price was totaled at $500,000 for just under four-tenths of an acre, half of the church’s goal.

With the additional space, Green-Wood’s president, Richard J. Moylan, has said that within five years time the cemetery will have to stop selling plots. The additional 200+ plots that they purchased from Old First Reformed Church will help the cemetery but Moylan still thinks that the five year estimate is a fair estimate.

Some notables buried in the Old First’s section (as the section is known) include newspaper publisher Horace Greeley, the political boss William M. Tweed and the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

For more of this story by James Barron of the New York Times, click here.