Green-Wood Cemetery

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Template:Infobox nrhp 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]

Image:DSCF0139B.jpg
Main Entrance gate to Green-Wood cemetery on 5th Avenue
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Graves at Green-Wood
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Vista from the Hillside Mausoleum
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A few of the many mausoleums at Green-Wood

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

Contents

[edit] Notable burials

[edit] Further reading

[edit] Archive

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

[edit] References

  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 Template:Cite news
  4. ^ Template:Cite news
  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. ^ Template:Cite news

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Template:Registered Historic PlacesTemplate:NewYork-NRHP-stub Template:NewYork-stub

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