File:Concordia Cemetery, Buffalo, New York - 20210407 - 02.jpg

English: Concordia Cemetery, 438 Walden Avenue, Buffalo, New York, April 2021. The second-largest cemetery in Buffalo at 15 acres in area, Concordia contains the remains of almost 17,000 individuals, mostly the German immigrants that came to dominate the population of the city and especially of the East Side during the second half of the 19th century. Many tombstones, such as those seen here, are carved with epitaphs that are bilingual or entirely in German. Concordia was founded in 1859 on what was then the outskirts of town, specifically on what was previously John and Magdalene Stellwagen's farm (their farmhouse and barn are still used as the cemetery's offices and maintenance shed, respectively). Despite that date, it sports a simple design that is more typical of the early 19th century, before the era of exquisitely landscaped "rural cemeteries" such as Forest Lawn. The rectangular plot is divided into three sections that correspond to the three churches that together established Concordia as their burial ground (Holy Trinity Lutheran, St. Peter's German Evangelical, and St. Stephen's Evangelical); the Walden Avenue entrance features an original wrought-iron fence built around the time of its foundation, which is now partially located on a concrete retaining wall built when the Niagara Falls Branch of the Erie Railroad was routed through here in the early 20th century. Over time, the ethnic constitution of Concordia's new interrals began to shift, first becoming majority-Eastern European (beginning in the 1920s) and then African-American (beginning about 1950), in tune with the demographic changes of the surrounding neighborhood. By the 1970s, the cemetery was beginning to run out of vacant burial plots to sell and had begun to fall victim to neglect - a situation that was ameliorated somewhat when lot holders ousted the cemetery's then-owner and established a Board of Directors to oversee maintenance, but brought to the forefront once again in 2001 when it was revealed that treasurer William Whitehead had embezzled $154,000 from the cemetery's dwindling bank account. Thankfully, to forestall wholesale abandonment of the cemetery, the state government agreed to take over maintenance, and the IRS agreed to drop its claim of $30,000 in back payroll taxes stemming from Whitehead's financial mismanagement, and the cemetery is once again on stable financial footing. Concordia was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.