These students are ditching the beach to spend their summer break with some of the city’s most historic dead.
Volunteers from France and New York have raised more than two dozen toppled 18th century headstones in Queens’ oldest grave site.
The work to restore the formerly forgotten Prospect Cemetery in Jamaica is part of a two-week program organized by Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery.
“It’s really peaceful,” said Viviane Normant, 33, one of the French citizens enrolled in the exchange program. “Working in a cemetery is beautiful.”
Erosion from time and the ravages of weather caused the 60-pound headstones to fall, program officials said.
It took as many as four volunteers to lift each of the 30 slabs back onto their bases.
Prospect Cemetery, which dates to 1668, is the final resting place of many Revolutionary War veterans and illustrious New York families like the Van Wycks, Sutphins and Brinkerhoffs.
But despite its historic pedigree, it fell into disrepair, turning into an overgrown jungle over the decades.
Preservationists have been slowly cleaning it up.
“New Yorkers forget what an old city we are,” said New York Landmarks Conservancy president Peg Breen. “But it’s not just for history — this is also open space.”
