Green-Wood Cemetery

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Green-Wood Cemetery
(U.S. National Historic Landmark)
The Chapel at Green-Wood Cemetery
The Chapel at Green-Wood Cemetery
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Coordinates: 40°39′08″N, 73°59′28″W
Area: 478 acres (1.9 km²)
Built/Founded: 1838 [1]
Architect: David Bates Douglass; Richard Upjohn & Son
Designated as NHL: September 20, 2006 [1]
Added to NRHP: March 08, 1997 [2]
NRHP Reference#: 97000228
Governing body: Private cemetery

Green-Wood Cemetery was founded in 1838 as a rural cemetery in Kings County, New York, now in Brooklyn. [3] It was granted National Historic Landmark status in 2006 by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Located in Greenwood Heights, Brooklyn, it lies several blocks west of Prospect Park, between Park Slope, Windsor Terrace and Sunset Park. In The New York Times, it was said that "it is the ambition of the New Yorker to live upon the Fifth Avenue, to take his airings in the Park, and to sleep with his fathers in Green-Wood".[4] Inspired by Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where a cemetery in a naturalistic park-like landscape in the English manner was first established, Green-Wood was able to take advantage of the varied topography provided by glacial moraines. Battle Hill, the highest point in Brooklyn, is on cemetery grounds.

The cemetery was the idea of Henry Evelyn Pierrepoint, a Brooklyn social leader. It was a popular tourist attraction in the 1850s and was the place most famous New Yorkers who died during the second half of the nineteenth century were buried. It is still an operating cemetery with approximately 600,000 graves spread out over 478 acres (1.9 km²). The rolling hills and dales, several ponds and an on-site chapel provide an environment that still draws visitors. On weekends cars are allowed on cemetery grounds. There are several famous monuments located there, including a statue of DeWitt Clinton and a Civil War Memorial. During the Civil War, Green-Wood Cemetery created the "Soldiers' Lot" for free veterans' burials.

Richard Upjohn designed an entrance gate on 5th Avenue opposite 25th Street (1861) in the Gothic Revival style, along with several wooden shelters (including one in a Gothic Revival style, one resembling an Italian villa, and another resembling a Swiss chalet).[5] A descendent colony of monk parakeets that escaped their containers on a flight from South America to Idlewild International Airport (today JFK) in the 1960s today nests in the center spire of the gate.[6][7]

Main Entrance gate to Green-Wood cemetery on 5th Avenue
Main Entrance gate to Green-Wood cemetery on 5th Avenue
Graves at Green-Wood
Graves at Green-Wood
Vista from the Hillside Mausoleum
Vista from the Hillside Mausoleum
A few of the many mausoleums at Green-Wood
A few of the many mausoleums at Green-Wood

The cemetery was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2006.[1]

Contents

The Pierrepont papers, deposited at the Brooklyn Historical Society contain material concerning the organizing of Green-Wood Cemetery.

  1. ^ a b c Green-Wood Cemetery. National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service (2007-09-14). “Green-Wood Cemetery, established in 1838, was the largest and most varied of the early American rural cemeteries. Its scale, diverse topography, and intended civic prominence made it the prototype for how a cemetery with Picturesque landscaping could be created in contrast to the rapidly expanding cities of the 19th century. Inspired by Alexander Jackson Downing, the most nationally prominent landscape designer and author in antebellum America, David Bates Douglass conceived the overall plan for the Picturesque landscape, executed with complementary Gothic Revival buildings by Richard Upjohn and his son Richard Michell Upjohn”
  2. ^ National Register Information System. National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service (2007-01-23).
  3. ^ a b "Ground as Hallowed as Cooperstown; Green-Wood Cemetery, Home to 200 Baseball Pioneers", New York Times, April 1, 2004. Retrieved on 2007-08-21. "Before A-Rod and Jeter, there were J-Creigh and Woodward. That would be James Creighton, Jr., the world's first true baseball star, and John B. Woodward, an outfielder who became a Union general in the Civil War. Both played for the Excelsior Club -- sort of the Yankees of the early 1860's -- and now both reside in the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. ... Mr. Nash discovered some monuments, like that of Duncan Curry, by sheer chance, while walking through the cemetery. Curry, first president of the Knickerbocker Baseball Club, is immortalized with a monument that proudly dubs him Father of Baseball because he headed the club that scholars say first codified many of the game's rules. ... Another Green-Wood resident, DeWolf Hopper, a thespian, delivered a rendition of the Ernest Thayer poem, Casey at the Bat, shortly after it was published in 1888, and proceeded to perform it more than 10,000 times over the next half-century. One of his six marriages was to a Hollywood socialite who took his name: Hedda Hopper. At Tulip Hill, the imposing granite vault of the three Patchen brothers -- Sam Patchen (shortstop), Joe Patchen (right field) and Edward Patchen (infielder) -- is the only crypt of early baseball players, the Alou brothers of their time. ... A happier story is that of Charles J. Smith, one of the great players of the 1860's, Mr. Richman said. He was buried in a seemingly unmarked grave at Green-Wood. But investigation by a grounds crew discovered his monument last year, a few feet underground, where it had sunk. It has now been restored." 
  4. ^ Goldberger, Paul. "Design Notebook; Pastoral Green-Wood cemetery is a lesson in 19th-century taste.", The New York Times, 1977-11-17. Retrieved on 2007-09-23. "'Before there was a Central Park and a Prospect Park, people came to GreenWood,' said William J. Ward. Green-Wood is not a park, it is not a playground and it is not a rural outpost; it is a cemetery in southwest Brooklyn. But there is no mystery as to why it was once popular for Sunday outings--Green-Wood is as lush a landscape as exists anywhere in the built-up boroughs of New York." 
  5. ^ Pierrepont Family Memorial. Retrieved on 2007-09-23. “Henry Evelyn Pierrepont was known as the "first citizen" of Brooklyn for good reason. He, along with his father Hezekiah B. and mother Anna Maria before him, played a significant role in the planning of Brooklyn as a physical city, its crucial ferry services to New York, and the establishment of Green-Wood Cemetery itself.”
  6. ^ BrooklynParrots.com: A Web Site About the Wild Parrots of Brooklyn. Retrieved on 2007-09-23. “The beautiful Civil War-era gate to Greenwood Cemetery is spectacular in its own right; add vociferous parrots and you've got one of the most sublime, most surreal locales on the planet.”
  7. ^ Pesquarelli, Adrianne. Gothham Gigs. Crain's New York Business. Retrieved on 2007-09-23. “The article presents information concerning the year-round tours led by Steve Baldwin in Brooklyn, New York to the nests of parrots. Baldwin volunteers to lead walking tours to the nests of an extended family of wild Quaker parrots which escaped from a shipping crate at JFK International Airport in the late 1960s.”
  8. ^ "Final Tributes To Montague. Thousands Of Friends Attend His Funeral Services. Rev. Dr. Houghton Speaks Of His Life. A "Straw" Bail Man In Custody.", New York Times, August 22, 1878, Wednesday. Retrieved on 2007-08-21. "The mortal remains of Henry J. Montague were laid to rest yesterday within the quiet precincts of Green-Wood Cemetery. No elaborate ceremonies were performed over the coffin, but a thousand mourners, many of them weeping attend the services in "The Little Church Around the Corner," and as many more followed the hearse to the cemetery. The funeral services were carried out in accordance with the programme previously arranged." 

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