With space at Brooklyn's historic Green-Wood Cemetery at a premium these days, the Times tracks down the one man perhaps most responsible for the few remaining plots as they begin to expire. 54-year-old Lithuanian immigrant Kestutis Demereckas (known as Kestas) is Green-Wood's sole groundskeeper-turned-engineer, who will know for certain when the last body can be buried there, saying that after he is gone there will be no room, even for "Mr. Obama." He has been finding room for new bodies where there appeared to be none for two decades and tells the paper, “Sometimes I work three or four days, only to find no room. Nobody thought, ‘Someday Kestas will come looking for graves.’ ” More than half of Green-Wood's bodies date back over a century; these days plots where bodies are generally stacked on top of one another can fetch up to $60,000 for a family of nine. Kestas is exactly the kind of icy yet welcoming figure you'd hope for at a graveyard—he openly shares tales of his wife's desire to be buried in his workplace when she had a fatal illness (she survived) and the time he came across "The Hill of Graves" to wonder, "‘Why are these lots so small?’ And I find out. Babies.” more ›

Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery has been carving out quite a niche for itself by investing in its collection of art once created by some of the 220 artists who are buried there. In a feature in today's Times, the cemetery's historian Jeffrey Richman says that it is because “none of the nation’s other historic cemeteries have substantial systematic collections of deceased artists.” They also note nice touches like the cemetery's discovery and acquisition of a painting of DeWitt Clinton by George Catlin (both buried there). Green-Wood has invested more than $250,000 into its collection and has been abetted by a rough stretch for the art market. Its president Richard Moylan said, “The economic downturn is horrible, but it has made a lot of art more affordable.” And if the economy starts getting really really bad, maybe Green-Wood will even be able to afford paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Samuel Morse, both buried there but whose works are out of its budget. more ›