Sympathy flowers in Elizabeth

The geography of an Elizabeth funeral is unusually compact, and it centers on Broad Street. The Union County courthouse complex at 2 Broad Street and City Hall on Winfield Scott Plaza mark the civic middle of the city, and the church corridor runs the same street: First Presbyterian Church, a congregation founded in 1664 whose colonial burying ground holds Revolutionary-era stones, and St. John's Episcopal Church, another colonial-era parish, both on Broad Street; St. Patrick Church on Court Street a block off it; St. Mary of the Assumption on South Broad Street toward Peterstown. Boxwood Hall, the East Jersey Street house where Elias Boudinot lived and where Washington stopped in 1789, sits in the same few blocks — Elizabeth was New Jersey's first English-speaking settlement and its first capital, and the oldest part of the city still reads that way. The funeral homes cluster where the repo has always described them: along North Broad Street and Elmora Avenue. Outside the city line, the Union County chapels most often named on an Elizabeth service sheet are Mastapeter Funeral Home on Faitoute Avenue in Roselle Park, Dooley Funeral Home on North Avenue West in Cranford, McCracken Funeral Home and Galante Funeral Home both on Morris Avenue in Union, and Gray Funeral Home on East Broad Street in Westfield. Burial usually lands at Evergreen Cemetery, the large historic ground at 1137 North Broad Street on the Hillside side of the Elizabeth line, or at Rosedale and Rosehill Cemetery in Linden, Graceland Memorial Park in Kenilworth, Hollywood Memorial Park in Union, St. Gertrude Cemetery in Colonia, Fairmount Cemetery in Newark, Holy Cross Cemetery in North Arlington or Gate of Heaven in East Hanover. Families burying on Staten Island use Moravian Cemetery in New Dorp, Resurrection Cemetery in Pleasant Plains or Ocean View — the four Staten Island benches on this grid are the shorter drive for those.