Once listed on Zillow for $1 million, Philly’s Mount Vernon Cemetery sells for $1

Every once in a while we encounter a person or place in life that changes our idea of what something is or can be.

It doesn’t happen often — you’re lucky if you get a dozen such moments — but it happened to me last week as I walked through three miles of moss-covered trails in the Pine Barrens that challenged everything I knew about cemeteries.

Along those trails under canopies of green trees, I discovered graves around every corner like they were secret treasures, I laughed at cheeky quotes like “I’m going to live forever” etched in headstones, and I marveled at moss so dense and lush it felt like carpeting.

“This is a special place,” I scribbled in my notebook. “I’ve never considered being buried, before today.”

I went to check out New Jersey’s first green burial preserve, Steelmantown Cemetery in Woodbine, because its owner, Ed Bixby, is the new owner of another graveyard that’s closer to home, the once-abandoned Mount Vernon Cemetery in North Philadelphia.

The 26-acre burial ground at Lehigh and Ridge Avenues across from Laurel Hill Cemetery made headlines last year when it was listed for sale for $1 million on Zillow. The post went viral, but it didn’t mention Mount Vernon’s 33,000 dead tenants, the legions of ticks, or the unruly overgrowth laced with poison ivy that volunteers call “the green inferno.”

Those with direct knowledge of the cemetery said it’s worth nothing in its current condition and estimated that it will take several hundred thousand dollars to clean up.

While there was interest in the property, a viable buyer wasn’t found. Bixby — who owns 14 cemeteries from New Jersey to California through his Steelmantown Cemetery Company — was asked if he’d take ownership. He agreed to the sale for $1, with the condition that all liens and encumbrances against the property would be cleared.

Bixby plans to create a hybrid cemetery at Mount Vernon, where the existing grounds are cleaned and preserved and new, natural burial sites and trails, like those at Steelmantown, are created.

“I want to use Mount Vernon as an example of what a cemetery is and can be,” he told me. “Sometimes in life, tragedy can turn into triumph.”

Sometimes, it can happen in death, too. (Just ask Van Gogh.)

Dating to 1856, Mount Vernon is the burial grounds of members of the Drew and Barrymore acting dynasties, Revolutionary and Civil War soldiers, and Continental Congress delegates. It contains beautiful monuments, scores of wildlife, and thousands of stories.

In 2021, the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas placed the cemetery into conservatorship with the Philadelphia Community Development Coalition (PCDC) after its previous owner, D.C. lawyer Joseph Dinsmore Murphy, let it fall into disrepair and the grounds became inaccessible for decades.

When a permanent steward couldn’t be found, the Mount Vernon Cemetery Conservation Company was created to take over after the conservatorship ended. The property would be transferred to the nonprofit for $1, but first it needed to raise $300,000 to maintain the grounds.

Thaddeus Squire, who formerly managed the conservation company, said the philanthropy dollars just weren’t there. Out of options, he called a contact at Laurel Hill, who suggested that he reach out to Bixby.

“This is Ed’s full time job and he has in-house resources, all of that is a no-brainer,” Squire said. “It was really ideal that Ed was willing to take it on.”

PCDC president David Champagne confirmed the sale via email. Transfer is expected to “happen imminently,” and the city agreed to waive about a half-million dollars in delinquent real estate taxes on the property, he said.

Brandon Zimmerman, president of the Friends of Mount Vernon Cemetery, said he’s excited that Bixby isn’t scared to take on the burial grounds.

“This is a professional who knows how to take care of cemeteries and specifically knows how to take care of overgrown cemeteries,” Zimmerman said. “He came in and he was just like, ‘This is really not a big deal,’ and that was a good sign.”

Bixby estimates that it will cost somewhere between $350,000 to $400,000 to clean Mount Vernon and restore its gatehouse. He envisions a trail system through the cemetery, turning it into a park and arboretum for the community. He hopes to have the gates open from dawn to dusk within a year.

The Friends of Mount Vernon will continue to be stewards of the cemetery’s history and host programs and tours there.

“What attracted me to Mount Vernon was we had this group of people that were dedicated to it,” Bixby said.

With many records missing, Bixby will use ground-penetrating radar and other methods to identify available space at Mount Vernon for new burials, which will create a revenue stream to make the property self-sufficient.

“There will be plenty of identifiable, vacant space,” he said.

A native of Cape May County and a real estate developer and broker by trade, Bixby didn’t mean to get into the cemetery business. But in 2007, he went to visit his brother’s grave at Steelmantown and was horrified to find it was “like a dumping ground.”

“I went to tell the owner to clean it up. He didn’t have resources but said, ‘How about I give it to you?’” Bixby recalled. “I took it because I felt someone needed to be responsible. I didn’t think I was going to create a career in the funeral profession.”

Shortly thereafter, Bixby read an article about natural burials, and “the stars aligned.”

In natural, or green, burials, no embalming fluid is used and there’s no concrete vault. The deceased’s remains are placed in a biodegradable container, like a basket or pine box, and their loved ones can carry them to the site, lower them, and fill the grave.

“With a natural burial people can care for their loved ones in death as they did in life,” Bixby said.

Though there is a small traditional-style cemetery in the center of Steelmantown, where headstones dating to the 1800s are aligned in rows near a chapel, it’s along the many trails that spur out from the center where the graveyard really shines.

The moss on the paths coats everything so completely that it looks like the trails are verdant rivers of green, and gravesites along the way are not marked by large tombstones but by engraved rocks and simple wooden crosses.

I was particularly moved by one gravesite outlined with dozens of tiny, painted stones, each with a personal message to the deceased (“I’ll hold you in my heart until I can hold you in heaven.”).

Some graves were flush with the ground, others were piled up with dirt and covered with last year’s autumn leaves and new life — tiny mushrooms, wildflowers, and passing butterflies. Some people were buried with their pets, an option Bixby said will be available at Mount Vernon, too.

I particularly liked the tombstones that made me smile, the dead who were far from stiff and had quotes engraved on their headstones like:

Zimmerman said visiting Steelmantown made him excited for the possibilities of what Mount Vernon could be. I felt the same way.

“This is a cemetery that looks like the Wissahickon, where the headstones blend in with the landscape rather than these massive monuments,” Zimmerman said. “Afterwards, I walked out going ‘Yeah, man, this is the future.’”

Once Steelmantown became a green cemetery, Bixby received requests from people across the country wanting to be buried there. By 2014, he’d buried a dozen Californians in Steelmantown who’d never set foot in New Jersey.

Even the locals who frequented Steelmantown’s paths became attached to it.

“I’ve had people walk the trails say, ‘I love it here, but I have a plot over there,’ and then three years later, they buy a plot in our cemetery,” Bixby said.

Today, Bixby owns traditional, natural, and hybrid cemeteries in six states. He was planning on slowing down, until “the biggest project of them all” — Mount Vernon — fell into his lap.

“This is the cemetery that can make the largest impact nationally by taking a place that was thrown away, beyond hope, and turning it into a pillar of the community and creating a space where others say, ‘I want my cemetery to be just like that one,‘” Bixby said. “There are Mount Vernons all over the world.”