Event Series Trolleyology

Trolleyology: Cemetery Transit: A History of Death Riding the Rails

Transportation and the cemetery have been linked for centuries, from 19th-century ferries carrying the dead in New York City to early 20th-century funerary street cars in Mexico City. Every city had to find a way to move its departed citizens to their final stop, such as Pittsburgh's Citizens Passenger Railway Horsecar, which in 1859 established a route between Fifth Avenue and a cemetery. This online talk led by Allison Meier, the author of Grave (Bloomsbury, 2023) and a cemetery tour guide, will chronicle these surprising connections between the dead and transit both in the United States and around the world, including a look at some historic curios like the London Necropolis Railway and presidential funeral trains.

Free
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