Temple Emanu-El Cemetery

The graves moved here in 1956 came by court agreement. D Magazine reports that the Hebrew Benevolent Association, formed in 1872 by eleven Jewish men, bought a small tract off Akard Street from Mayor Henry Ervay. When the city wanted the land for Dallas Memorial Auditorium, a friendly lawsuit led to the remains of fifty-three people being moved north, with Henry S. Miller Sr. as trustee. The Dallas Jewish Historical Society dates this cemetery's formal founding to 1886 and notes a marker for the relocated graves. The Akard Street park has no monument naming those buried there.

What the plaque says

Temple Emanu-El Cemetery Established by Temple Emanu-el congregation in 1884, this was the second Jewish cemetery in Dallas. The first burials which occurred here were those of Russian immigrants Aaron L. Levy and Jacob Rosenthal. Both men were born in Russia on June 2, 1856, and died in Dallas on October 7, 1884. Gravestones exhibiting death dates prior to 1884 mark burials which were moved here in 1956 from Dallas' first Jewish cemetery. Established by the Hebrew Benevolent Society in 1872, that graveyard was originally located downtown on Akard Street. Among those interred here are many of Dallas' early business , civic, religious, political, and social leaders. The cemetery contains thousands of graves, marked by a diversity of tombstones and monuments, including two private family mausoleums. Also buried here are veterans of World War I and World War II, as well as several survivors of the Nazi holocaust in World War II. A memorial to Jewish veterans of the two world wars was dedicated in 1948. Maintenance of this historic cemetery, which serves as a tangible reminder of the area's Jewish heritage, is overseen by Temple Emanu-el Congregation. (1989)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dallas Museum of Art — 1.1 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 1.8 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 2.1 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 2.5 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• Colonel C. C. Slaughter — steps away
• Freedman's Cemetery — steps away
• Greenwood Cemetery — 0.3 mi
• The McNab Grocery — 0.5 mi