Nice idea.
I don't know how it would happen in NYC, however, I know what happened in France back during the revolution. People simply didn't care and did what they had to do. In that case it was taking stone out of the cemetery to build houses.
However, among the crowd a number of isolated people kept track of what was done to the remains and that helped later when someone hoped to find out about them. Later, a cemetery's name was eventually given to a new building that was made on the spot. That's how you find today an Innocents square which stands right on the spot of the former innocents cemetery (the cemetery where unbaptised children were buried).
As a result, elsewhere in US, long after T2K, you could find an Arlington Square where that cemetery was located (just an exemple).
Count more on individual people to show that kind of respect. In group, humans tend to be stupid and beasty.
