In the mid-1800s, Kew Gardens was a rural refuge with glacial ponds used for swimming in the summer and ice skating in the winter. In 1875, Maple Grove Cemetery was established in Kew Gardens and became a 65-acre pastoral preserve of rolling hills, winding paths, and planted grounds. Today, it is the area’s only open, green landscape, the link to a more tranquil past in the midst of a busy, residential community. The cemetery is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

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The new Center at Maple Grove is an 18,000 sf landscape building that forms the gateway to the cemetery. To create this new gateway, part of an 8-foot-high masonry wall surrounding the cemetery was demolished. The removed wall was reconstructed metaphorically as the major organizing element within the building. It serves as a demarcation line between the secular landscape of Kew Gardens and the sacred landscape of the cemetery.  Constructing a building based on the idea of a garden wall makes the case emphatically for opening the cemetery landscape to the community and joining together these two disparate landscapes in an interconnected and cooperative manner.