Remembering Stanley Cogan

Stanley Cogan, a Queens historian with a penchant for preserving cemeteries, passed away on September 12, 2011, at the age of 86. Cogan began his career as a pianist and went on to become an elementary school teacher and the assistant principal of P.S. 40 in Jamaica. He served as President of the Queens Historical Society from 1990 to 2005 and as the Queens Borough Historian from 1999 until 2010, and he helped to inspire the establishment of the Queens Preservation Council. With a focus on documenting local cemeteries and advocating for their preservation, he received the nickname, "The Head Stone." Queens Borough President Helen Marshall said, “Stanley Cogan was a Renaissance Man. He knew the beauty of art and architecture, he knew the lessons that history taught us and he knew how important it was to protect and preserve the legacy of the generations that have gone before us." A full obituary can be found in the Queens Gazette.

This project has been funded in part by a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation's John E. Streb Preservation Fund for New York.