This article will be permanently flagged as inappropriate and made unaccessible to everyone. Are you certain this article is inappropriate? Excessive Violence Sexual Content Political / Social
Email Address:
Article Id: WHEBN0000165917 Reproduction Date:
Green-Wood Cemetery was founded in 1838 as a rural cemetery in Kings County,[4] New York.[5] 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 southwest of Prospect Park, between Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Borough Park, Kensington, and Sunset Park. Paul Goldberger in The New York Times, wrote that it was said "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".[6]
The Pierrepont papers deposited at the Brooklyn Historical Society contain material about the organizing of Green-Wood Cemetery.
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 and built in 1838,[7] is on cemetery grounds, rising approximately 200 feet above sea level. As such, there on that spot in 1920, was erected a Revolutionary War monument by Frederick Ruckstull, Altar to Liberty: Minerva. From this height, the bronze Minerva statue gazes towards The Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.[8]
The cemetery was the idea of Henry Evelyn Pierrepont,[9] 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.
There are several famous monuments located there, including a statue of DeWitt Clinton, and a memorial erected by James Brown, president of Brown Brothers bank and the Collins Line, to the six members of his family lost in the SS Arctic disaster of 1854. This incorporates a sculpture of the ship, half-submerged by the waves. As well as a Civil War Memorial, during the Civil War, Green-Wood Cemetery created the "Soldiers' Lot" for free veterans' burials.
The gates were designed by Richard Upjohn in Gothic Revival style. The main entrance to the cemetery was built in 1861 of Belleville brownstone. The sculptured groups depicting biblical scenes from the New Testament including Lazarus, The Widow's Son, and Jesus' Resurrection over the gateways are the work of John M. Moffitt. A Designated Landmarks of New York plaque was erected on it in 1958 by the New York Community Trust.
Several wooden shelters were also built, including one in a Gothic Revival style, one resembling an Italian villa, and another resembling a Swiss chalet.[10] A descendent colony of monk parakeets that are believed to have escaped their containers while in transit now nests in the spires of the gate, as well as other areas in Brooklyn.[11][12]
On December 5, 1876, the Brooklyn Theater Fire claimed the lives of at least 278 individuals, with some accounts reporting over 300 dead. Out of that total, 103 unidentified victims were interred in a common grave at Green-Wood Cemetery. An obelisk near the main entrance at Fifth Avenue and 25th Street marks the burial site. More than two dozen identified victims were interred individually in separate sections at the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn. Also buried at the cemetery are 6 British Commonwealth service personnel whose graves are registered by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, 3 from World War I and 3 from World War II, among the latter being Leading Aircraftsman Remsen Taylor Williams (died 1941 aged 26), Royal Canadian Air Force, who is buried in the Steinway Vault.[13]
Green-Wood has remained non-sectarian, but was generally considered a Christian burial place for white Anglo-Saxon Protestants of good repute. One early regulation was that no one executed for a crime, or even dying in jail, could be buried there. Although he died in the Ludlow Street Jail, the family of the infamous "Boss" Tweed managed to circumvent this rule.[14] The cemetery's chapel was completed in 1911. It was designed by the architectural firm of Warren and Wetmore, who also designed Grand Central Terminal, the Commodore Hotel, the Yale Club and many other buildings. The architecture of the chapel is a reduced version of Christopher Wren's Thomas Tower at Christ Church College in Oxford, and was restored in 2001.
In 1999, The Green-Wood Historic Fund, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit institution, was created to continue preservation, beautification, educational programs and community outreach as the current "working cemetery" evolves into a Brooklyn cultural institution.
The cemetery was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2006.[1]
In 2012, Hurricane Sandy toppled or damaged at least 292 of the mature trees in the cemetery. The damage was estimated at $500,000.[15]
European beech tree and mausoleums
Largest tulip tree in the cemetery
Large ginkgo tree
Camperdown elm tree
Two old sassafras trees
Koi pond in the Tranquility Garden section of the Cemetery
Notes
Further reading
New York City, Long Island, Albany, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania
Confederate States of America, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, United States, Republican Party (United States)
Jstor, National Park Service, United States Department of the Interior, Historic preservation, Pdf
William Howard Taft, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, Republican Party (United States), Franklin D. Roosevelt
American Civil War, Brooklyn, Union Army, American Revolutionary War, War of 1812
Horace Greeley, Green-Wood Cemetery, Usa, Albert Anastasia, Peter Cooper
John Locke, Adam Smith, Game theory, Real estate, Philadelphia
Office of Naval Intelligence, United States Army, New Orleans, United States, United States Navy
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Brooklyn, United States, United States Navy