Green-Wood Cemetery

Mass graves

There are several mass graves and communal burial sites at Green-Wood, where tens to hundreds of people may be buried. Among these are the Freedom Lots, seven parcels at the cemetery's southwest corner where the remains of 1,300 African Americans are interred. Also at Green-Wood is a mass grave for 103 unidentified victims of the 1876 Brooklyn Theatre fire; this site, leased by the New York City government, has a 30-foot-tall (9.1 m) obelisk. The cemetery contains a common grave with the unidentified remains of victims of the 1960 New York mid-air collision, adjacent to a memorial for the victims. Another grave contains some unidentified remains relocated from Washington Square Park in Manhattan. There is also a soldiers' lot, which houses the remains of 1,000 American Civil War soldiers relocated from elsewhere in the cemetery.

Mausoleums

Green-Wood's more elaborate mausoleums include William Niblo's Grand Gothic mausoleum, Abiel Abbot Low's tomb, and the Lispenard family's Norman-style mausoleum. The Steinway family's mausoleum, designed in a classical style, can fit 136 bodies. A mausoleum for restaurateur Charles Feltman is designed in the style of a temple. Another mausoleum, built in granite for John William Mackay, has its own chapel and a heating system. A granite mausoleum, near 39th Street, was erected by US congressman Henry C. Miner for his family. The cemetery has a small number of white bronze mausoleums, though these were no longer manufactured after World War I and were subjects of vandalism.

Numerous mausoleums were designed by popular contemporary architects, including Minard Lafever, Warren and Wetmore, Richard Upjohn, and Griffith Thomas. For instance, Thomas designed a mausoleum for San Francisco mayor C. K. Garrison in the Moorish Revival style. Stanford White designed a mausoleum for the family of arts patron Isabella Stewart, whose infant son is buried there; this mausoleum contains sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Henry Evelyn Pierrepont, the merchant who cofounded Green-Wood Cemetery, is buried in a mausoleum designed by Upjohn on one of Green-Wood's few manmade hills. At Prospect Park West and 20th Street, Carrère and Hastings designed a square mausoleum, which measured 350 feet (110 m) on each side and could fit urns for 30,000 people.

Gates

Main entrance gate at 25th Street

"Weep Not", one of John Moffitt's sculpted panels

A monk parakeet colony at the main gate

The cemetery has four gates. Two are city landmarks: the main gate at 25th Street to the northwest, which is closest to Greenwood Heights, and Fort Hamilton Parkway to the south, which is in Kensington. The gates were all developed from the 1840s to the 1860s. In general, the gatehouses are made of brownstone and yellow sandstone, with copper and slate-shingle roofs.

The main entrance, a double-arched Gothic Revival gate at 25th Street and Fifth Avenue near Green-Wood's northwestern corner, was designed by Upjohn and built in 1861–1863; the entrance itself opened in 1862. It is composed of Belleville, New Jersey, brownstone. The sculptured groups on Nova Scotia limestone panels over the gateways—depicting biblical scenes of death and resurrection from the New Testament, including Lazarus, The Widow's Son, and Jesus' Resurrection—are by John M. Moffitt. In between the two gateways is a clock tower in the Flamboyant style, which measures 100 feet (30 m) or 106 feet (32 m) tall. The words "The Dead Shall Be Raised" are carved into the gateway. A cemetery office is to one side of the gate, while the chapel and reception room are on the opposite side. A colony of monk parakeets, which are believed to have escaped their containers while in transit, nests in the spires of the gate. The New York Community Trust placed a Designated Landmarks of New York plaque on the gate in 1958.

The Fort Hamilton gate, also designed by Upjohn, is located at Fort Hamilton Parkway and Micieli Place. Similar to the 25th Street gate, it is a double gateway made of brownstone. It is also flanked by two structures, a visitor's lounge and the gatekeeper's residence. The gate was built between 1876 and 1887. The visitor's lounge, a 1+1⁄2-story structure, is east of the gate. It has a central entrance, two side bays with porches, restrooms for men and women, and a sloping hip roof made of gray slate with metal ornamentation and dormers. The west side of the entrance contains the gatekeeper's residence, a brownstone structure consisting of a 3+1⁄2-story central tower and two shorter pavilions, which is similar in design to the visitor's lounge. Both pavilions have gray slate roofs, and the building includes various windows and doorway entrances; the roof of the central tower contains a stone chimney.

A Gothic Revival gate, designed by Warren and Wetmore, is located at Prospect Park West (Ninth Avenue) and 20th Street, to the northeast. It consists of a single-story gatehouse to the west and a two-story gatekeeper's residence to the east. A fourth gate, at 34th Street and Fourth Avenue, provides access from the southwest and is located next to Sunset Park and the 36th Street station of the New York City Subway, serving the D​, ​N​, and ​R trains. A fifth gate at Ninth Avenue and 37th Street, to the southwest, has since been removed.

Chapel

The Green-Wood Cemetery chapel, designed by Warren and Wetmore, occupies the site of one of Green-Wood's original ponds. The chapel is located near the 25th Street gate, near the cemetery's receiving tomb. Though it is generally designed in the Neo-Gothic or late Gothic style, its massing is in the Beaux-Arts style. It was patterned after the Tom Tower at Christ Church, Oxford. The chapel, an interdenominational house of worship, was made a city landmark in 2016.

The chapel is clad with limestone sourced from a quarry in Bedford, Indiana. The exterior consists of multiple towers, including a central, domed octagonal tower and octagonal turrets at each corner. From ground level to the pinnacle of the dome, the chapel measures about 88 feet (27 m) high. Inside are three stories: a ground level, a clerestory level, and a second story in the central tower. The chapel has a rectangular chancel with space for 100 people. The chancel has marble floors with mosaic borders, a marble altar, quartered-oak cabinetry and sacristy, stained glass windows depicting various Biblical scenes, and a stone vaulted ceiling.

Other structures

Several wooden shelters were built on the grounds, including one in a Gothic Revival style, one resembling an Italian villa, and another resembling a Swiss chalet. These shelters, designed by Richard Upjohn, had largely deteriorated by the late 20th century except for a ladies' shelter.

The cemetery also has a receiving tomb for corpses needing interment. The original receiving tomb was built in 1853 and was designed by Upjohn. The receiving tomb, rebuilt in 1909, is located at Willow and Sycamore avenues near the cemetery's entrance, adjacent to the chapel. It measures 132 by 56 feet (40 by 17 m) and has a freestone entrance porch, which leads to a 46-by-25-foot (14.0 by 7.6 m) entrance hall. Inside is a crypt called the catacombs, which is built into the hillside, partially above ground, which is hidden beneath an earthen mound. There are skylights in the ground just above the crypt. Originally, the crypt had 361 compartments for coffins. The receiving tomb also had a columbarium with space for 340 funerary urns; the columbarium was used for cremation.

A purpose-built crematorium with an attached columbarium was built in the 1950s and functions as an interdenominational facility. The crematorium, designed by Eldredge Snyder and located near 5th Avenue and 25th Street, is one story high (with a basement) and measures 120 by 75 feet (37 by 23 m) across. The columbarium has a ceiling with motifs of a blue sky and clouds, and it had a 1950s-era time capsule with books about the cemetery's history, which was removed in 2013. Green-Wood Cemetery also has an executive office building dating from the 1990s. The executive office building, spanning 6,000 square feet (560 m²), is adjacent to the cemetery's crematorium and is illuminated by blue transom windows.

The Hillside Mausoleum, one of the community mausoleums, is a utilitarian structure near Ocean Hill. The adjacent Hillside Mausoleum addition, designed by Platt Byard Dovell White, is an above-ground building spanning 8,000 square feet (740 m²). It is variously cited as four or five stories high, and has space for 3,800 urns and 2,300 coffins. The Hillside Mausoleum annex is designed in a modernist style with a glass facade resembling waterfalls, as well as a roof terrace abutting Ocean Hill. Inside are lavish decorations such as ipe wood stairs, anigre niches, flute-glass vigil lights, and brass bud vases. There are also two waterfalls in the mausoleum annex, which are five stories high and use recirculating water.

1840s: Early years

Douglass worked on the project until he resigned in 1841. The cemetery commissioners decided to enclose the site with a long picket fence, which was installed in 1842. Originally, the fence enclosed 175 acres (71 ha), stretching between 21st and 37th Streets from 5th to 9th Avenue. Approximately 5 miles (8 km) of roads were paved inside Green-Wood to showcase its natural scenery. The earliest map dating from 1846 indicates that there were originally three ponds: Sylvan Water, Green-Isle Water, and Arbor Water, all on the western side of the modern cemetery. These ponds were adapted from kettle ponds that already existed on the site. The cemetery also had various shrubs, trees, ivies, and perennials, which attracted migratory birds.

Green-Wood charged $100 (equivalent to $3,000 in 2025) for a 14-by-27-foot (4.3 by 8.2 m) parcel, which provided enough space for 18 to 36 bodies. There were originally very few burials per year. By 1843, there had been 352 burials total, though the number of burials doubled just in the next year. Throughout the 1840s, several churches were allocated plots in Green-Wood Cemetery. These included the Dutch Protestant Reformed, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Unitarian, and German Lutheran churches of Brooklyn. Henry E. Pierrepont also acquired eight burial plots for himself and his family. The first expansion of the burial ground took place in 1844, when the cemetery acquired 9 acres (3.6 ha). In either 1845 or 1847, the cemetery's commissioners acquired approximately 65 acres (26 ha). The new tract was at the southwest corner of the cemetery, adjacent to the contemporary border of the city of Brooklyn.

Originally, tickets were required to access the cemetery, but the cemetery's porter could reject "improper persons" with tickets; conversely, visitors without tickets could enter at the porter's discretion. Smoking and horseback riding at Green-Wood was prohibited, while only gravesite owners were allowed to travel through the cemetery via carriage. Green-Wood became more popular after former governor DeWitt Clinton was disinterred from a cemetery in Albany, the New York state capital, and moved to Green-Wood in 1844. Cemetery management advertised burial plots to prominent churches, clubs, and other organizations, further increasing Green-Wood's popularity. Large crowds took horse-drawn carriages or ferries to the cemetery, and by 1845 the cemetery recorded 2,300 carriages in a single month. To accommodate visitors, a ferry service was established in 1846. By 1848, the cemetery was recording an estimated 50,000 visitors in nine months.

1850s and 1860s

Fauna were being introduced to the cemetery by the 1850s, including a flock of 50 sparrows imported from Europe, who promptly flew away. Another 85 acres (34 ha) to the east was acquired in 1852 through the annexation of land in the then-separate village of Flatbush. By then, half of the land was forested or wooded. A receiving tomb was installed in 1853, and around the same time, the ponds were cleaned and landscaped. A knoll called "Chapel Hill" was also set aside within the cemetery; though Richard Upjohn submitted plans for a cemetery chapel in 1855, Green-Wood initially voted against such a chapel. A gatekeeper's house was installed at the original southern entrance in 1848, the "Thirty Vaults" catacombs in 1854, and a well house in 1855. Finally, in 1858 another 23 acres (9.3 ha) was acquired at the southeastern corner of the cemetery grounds. A plot at the southeast corner of the cemetery was purchased in 1863, allowing the commissioners to straighten out that border. The original fence was also replaced with a metal enclosure beginning in 1860.

An 1854 article in the Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion noted that Green-Wood had a variety of wooden buildings, including an old English-style carriage, and that the cemetery was served by carriages leading to ferry piers. By the early 1860s, Green-Wood was drawing annual crowds of over 500,000, second in size in New York state only to Niagara Falls. The cemetery had 7,000 annual burials and 100,000 graves. People had picnics, practiced shooting, strolled about, or merely relaxed on the grounds. There were also horse-drawn carriages leading to the front entrance and throughout the grounds themselves. Cemetery officials began selling stereo cards to visitors, and numerous guides to the cemetery were published, including an illustrated guidebook, a directory, a cemetery history book, and a handbook. Historian Shelly Mehlman Dinhofer said in an exhibit about the cemetery: "Bereavement was a social event", while Town and Country magazine said that the bucolic grounds were "as close as most city-dwellers got to God's Country". Another source likened Green-Wood to a "Victorian Disneyland".

By the 1860s, public streetcar and elevated lines were being established across Brooklyn, making Green-Wood easier to access. In particular, the opening of the Fifth Avenue Elevated station at 25th Street, near the main entrance, benefited the cemetery. In 1861, Richard Upjohn was hired to design a main gate at 25th Street; this was followed by the construction of three other entrances. The paths were paved in the 1860s to allow for easier transport within the cemetery. Bicycles were banned from the paths, a prohibition that continued even after vehicular transport was allowed. Starting in 1862, free interments were offered to the families of New York soldiers who died in war, and a soldiers' burial lot was established. Cast-iron markers were installed along the paths in the mid-1860s, and work started on the Civil War Soldiers' Monument at Green-Wood's highest point in 1868.

1870s to 1890s

By the 1870s, the cemetery's rulebook was 80 pages long; this rulebook dictated such details as the layout and style of graves, akin to zoning laws in cities. In 1871, Border Water was partially eliminated to make extra burial space. The cemetery was slightly expanded to 440 acres (180 ha) in 1874. A guide published that year cited Green-Wood as having 172,000 interments, along with 15 miles (24 km) of concrete walks and 17 miles (27 km) of paved roads. Several additional ponds were carved out through the 1870s, including Border Water, Dell Water, Crescent Water, Dale Water, and Meadow Water. The roads were also paved, and new roads, an underground drainage system, and a permanent stone fence were built.

Green-Wood built the Fort Hamilton gate in 1876 to accommodate the anticipated extra crowds. That year, the Civil War Soldiers' Monument was dedicated, and a memorial was erected for the victims of the Brooklyn Theatre fire. Following storms in the 1870s which damaged Green-Wood, cemetery officials built an irrigation system and wells. The cemetery was enlarged again in 1884 to 474 acres (192 ha) via the acquisition of land on the northern border. To prevent the view being marred by the construction of tenements, Green-Wood also purchased lots on the southwest corner. The next year, cemetery officials constructed four water-supply wells. A reservoir was added atop Mt. Washington, the highest point in the cemetery, in 1886; it could store 38,000 U.S. gallons (140,000 L).

By the early 1890s, two ponds had been removed. At the time, the cemetery employed between 100 and 300 people depending on the season. Architecture firm Carrère and Hastings also designed a 30,000-person mausoleum for the cemetery in 1891. During the decade, old engine house, stables, and several enclosures around burial plots were removed, while waiting rooms and restrooms were added at the southern entrance. During this period, thousands of trees were planted, and roads continued to be graded. Brooklyn, and by extension Green-Wood, became part of the City of Greater New York in 1898. By the end of the 19th century, several florists, greenhouses, and monument sellers had opened shops near each of the gates. One such structure was the Weir Greenhouse, located across from the 25th Street entrance and designed by George Curtis Gillespie.

1900s to 1920s

By the 1900s, the cemetery was described in Park and Cemetery and Landscape Gardening magazine as the "largest and most important cemetery in Greater New York", averaging about 3,000 new burials per year. Green-Wood was non-sectarian, but was generally favored by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants of good repute; one early regulation prevented those executed for a crime, or even dying in jail, from being buried there. The family of infamous political leader "Boss" Tweed managed to circumvent this rule even though he died in the Ludlow Street Jail. Another rule during that time prevented the erection of mausoleums with exposed perpendicular joints, though a cemetery official in 1907 found that many mausoleums violated this rule, of which 75% required "considerable attention" due to serious structural issues. Parcel owners had to explicitly bequeath their parcels to their heirs, who otherwise had to file affidavits to take over these lots. The receiving tomb at Green-Wood was renovated in 1909 for $60,000. Park and Cemetery and Landscape Gardening reported that the cemetery had 345,000 burials, but Rider's New York City wrote in 1916 that the cemetery had 325,000 burials by then.

View of old entrance gate and 20th Street right-of-way into the cemetery

A new location for the cemetery's long-delayed chapel was selected at Arbor Water in the first decade of the 20th century. Plans were solicited from three firms in 1909, and Warren and Wetmore won the commission for the chapel. The cemetery announced plans for the new chapel in 1910, and John Thatcher was hired to build it. Work started the next year, but completion of the chapel was delayed due to cemetery officials' demands that no masonry construction take place during the winter. The chapel was completed in 1913. In 1915, the entrance at 20th Street was realigned to connect with Prospect Park West, and another pond was drained. Warren and Wetmore were also hired to redesign several entrances that year, though completion of these entrances was delayed by a decade.

The landscape was in decline by the late 1910s. Gravediggers went on strike in 1919 to protest low wages, but they returned to work within a week, without having received any concessions. A war monument, dedicated to veterans from Long Island, was dedicated at the cemetery in 1920; there were also proposals at the time to add a memorial obelisk to the cemetery, similar to Boston's Bunker Hill Monument. By that decade, Green-Wood had a maintenance fund of at least $2 million. Dead trees were removed in the 1920s, and a five-year road repaving project began in 1924. By then, automobiles were commonplace within the cemetery, and they often violated the 6 miles per hour (9.7 km/h) speed limit. The Prospect Park West entrance opened in 1926, and the 25th Street and Fort Hamilton entrances were rebuilt the next year.

1930s to 1960s

In the mid-20th century, Green-Wood Cemetery remained a nonprofit organization. Road reconstructions continued through the mid-1930s, when the Works Progress Administration repaved the roads at the cemetery's edges. Demolition of gravesite enclosures continued during that period. Families were generally not allowed to remove the deceased from the grounds; this prompted a widow to sue in 1933 for the right to disinter her husband, which a state court permitted her to do. Workers went on strike in 1937 and again in 1939, requiring the deceased to be buried by mourners. By the cemetery's 100th anniversary in 1938, there were 440,000 people interred there. The clock tower at the 34th Street entrance was demolished in 1941, as part of the demolition of the adjacent Fifth Avenue elevated line. Iron fences were removed during World War II for the war effort. Green-Wood gravediggers again went on strike in May 1948; the strike ended seven weeks later once they received pay increases.

One entrance was demolished in 1951; by then, only one of the five original gatehouses (the Fort Hamilton entrance) still had a gatekeeper living there. Annual burials had declined to about 2,000 by that decade. A crematorium with a columbarium was built at Green-Wood starting in 1954, the first crematorium in New York City in a half-century. This crematory opened in September 1955. By the end of the 1950s, another reservoir had been filled for new lots. More than 1,000 enclosures were removed from 1950 to 1961, the same year that work on a new crematorium began. The cemetery was also affected by additional strikes among the gravediggers in 1966, as well as thefts of brass and other metal from graves.

1970s to 1990s

By the 1970s, Green-Wood had about 500,000 burials, and vandalism was common. In part to reduce vandalism, the cemetery was largely closed to visitors. Access was restricted except for family members of the deceased, commemorations such as Memorial Day, and limited tours. Regular tours were provided by a retired police officer who had studied Green-Wood's history for decades and by a local couple who lectured on the cemetery. Visitors needed permits just to enter the cemetery in a car, and the New York Daily News called Green-Wood "one of the most tightly guarded cemeteries". During that decade, Green-Wood still lacked electricity and retained some horse-hitching posts from the 19th century.

The columbarium was expanded from 1975 to 1977. Further strikes among gravediggers took place in 1973 and in 1982, the latter of which lasted several weeks. Two community mausoleums were finished in the late 1980s, and another community mausoleum, the Hillside Mausoleum, was expanded. A retaining wall was built around Sylvan Water in the late 1980s, and the Hillside Mausoleum was further expanded in the early 1990s. The north gate was restored in the mid-1990s, and new offices were built around that time, allowing the crematory building to be renovated. This was followed by the restoration of the chapel in the late 1990s.

By the 1990s, Green-Wood was running out of available space; it had removed numerous pathways and roads to make room for additional burials. Though the cemetery had about $200 million in assets by the end of the decade, the grounds cost $4 million a year to maintain, and many monuments (particularly those made of marble) were deteriorating. The cemetery employed over 100 staff during that decade. Concurrently, cemetery officials began to market Green-Wood as a tourist attraction and relaxed restrictions on access. Although modern crowds were not as intrigued by the concept of death as 19th-century crowds had been, visitors still came for the landscape and for the notable people buried there. In 1999, the cemetery hosted its first-ever concert, and the Green-Wood Historic Fund was also created to help with preservation and programming. Rich Moylan, Green-Wood's president, said the events were intended to prevent Green-Wood from becoming an abandoned cemetery, which under New York state law could be taken over by a local government.

2000s and 2010s

The chapel reopened in 2000, having been closed for several decades. Construction of the last phase of the Hillside Mausoleum began in 2001, and Platt Byard Dovell Architects was hired to design the mausoleum addition. The mausoleum annex, which cost $16 million, was completed in 2004. Also during the early 2000s, the Civil War monument was also restored. In addition, the cemetery began allowing people to sponsor older monuments. Green-Wood officials also sought to have the city government establish a protected view between the cemetery's Minerva statue and the Statue of Liberty. The city was initially uninterested in creating the protected view, but it agreed in 2010 to create an advisory bulletin denoting residents' position on high-rise development in the area.

The cemetery had 270,000 visitors by 2007, nearly double its annual visitation five years prior. By then, there was little space for new interments at Green-Wood Cemetery, which news media estimated would run out of space within one or two decades. Cemetery surveyor Kestutis Demereckas removed additional roads and paths, providing additional space for several more years' worth of burials. Even so, Demereckas told The New York Times in 2009 that he sometimes searched the cemetery for days without finding any vacant land. Although the cemetery still had 1,300 annual interments, most of the new burials took place on land that had already been sold. Because of the infeasibility of relying on new land sales, Green-Wood began raising money through other means such as trolley tours. Green-Wood hosted film screenings to attract visitors, though some decedents' families objected to the films.

Annual visitation had further increased to 300,000 or 400,000 by the early 2010s in part due to the cemetery's increased emphasis on events and programs. Cemetery officials acquired the Weir Greenhouse in 2011 with plans to convert it into a visitor center. Hurricane Sandy in October 2012 toppled or damaged hundreds of trees and gravestones, causing an estimated $500,000 in damage. Green-Wood moved its offices just outside the cemetery in 2014, allowing the existing office building inside cemetery grounds to be demolished to make room for more burials. By the mid-2010s, the wealthy were again choosing to buy burial plots at Green-Wood. The cemetery began performing green burials later that decade. Officials repurchased the 0.4-acre (0.16 ha) Cedar Dell plot from the Reformed Dutch Church of Brooklyn in 2017, repurposing it for green burials.

2020s to present

During the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, in 2020, the cemetery extended its hours of operation to accommodate visitors looking for open space; some visitors used the grounds for recreation, against cemetery rules. Green-Wood also handled increasing numbers of burials—up to 150 per week—at the pandemic's peak. Following Hurricane Henri and Hurricane Ida in 2021, cemetery officials completed several flood-resiliency projects, including the addition of stormwater storage tanks and water-absorbent pavement. A storm drain was also installed from Sylvan Water to the municipal sewage system. Moylan announced his retirement in 2024 and was succeeded the next year by former New York City deputy mayor Meera Joshi. By mid-decade, there was so little space for new burials, officials were looking for any available space they could find between existing graves.

A visitor center opened at the Weir Greenhouse in April 2026, at which point half a million people visited the cemetery annually. The same year, the New York City Council allocated $4 million for a new bike path and gate just outside the cemetery's perimeter. Cemetery officials also announced plans to allow human composting by 2027, making Green-Wood the first cemetery on the US East Coast to allow the practice; by then, both its traditional burials and its cremations were becoming environmentally unsustainable.

Veteran identification initiatives

Under cemetery historian Jeffrey Richman, the Green-Wood Historic Fund launched the Civil War Project, an effort to identify and remember Civil War veterans buried at Green-Wood, in 2002. These early graves had either sunk into the soil, been damaged, or had their markers erased; though some veterans had been identified and were regularly memorialized by local groups, there had previously been no overarching effort to identify all the veterans. About 1,200 gravestones were added for Civil War soldiers in the following decade, including 1,000 gravestones dedicated in 2007 alone. By 2021, Richman estimated that 2,400 gravestones had been installed.

In 2017, the Green-Wood Historic Fund identified another 200 World War I veterans who were interred in Green-Wood. The fund began another veteran-identification effort in 2021; this involved identifying World War II veterans and creating an online database of them. At the time, the fund estimated that thousands of Brooklyn's 326,000 World War II veterans were interred at Green-Wood. During the World War II project's first year, the fund identified 370 veterans who had been interred there.