Green-Wood Cemetery
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Green-Wood Cemetery was founded in 1838 as a rural cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, several blocks west of Prospect Park. In The New York Times it was said to be the "ambition of the New Yorker to live upon the Fifth Avenue, to take his airings in the Central Park, and to sleep with his fathers in Green-Wood". 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 (191 ha). 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.
Notable burials
- Dr.Samuel Akerly (1785-1845), surgeon, naturalist, founder New York Institute
- Albert Anastasia (1903-1957), mobster, "Lord High Executioner" for "Murder Inc."
- Othniel Boaz Askew (1972-2003), politician and assassin of James E. Davis (cremated)
- Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), artist
- Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), abolitionist
- James Gordon Bennett, Sr. (1795-1872), founder/publisher of the New York Herald
- Henry Bergh (1818-1888), founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
- Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), composer, conductor
- Samuel Blatchford (1820-1893), US Supreme Court Justice
- Henry Chadwick (1824-1908), Baseball Hall of Fame member (memorial)
- DeWitt Clinton (1769-1828), unsuccessful US presidential candidate 1812; US Senator from New York; seventh and ninth Governor of New York
- Peter Cooper (1791-1883), inventor, manufacturer, abolitionist, founder of Cooper Union
- Nathaniel Currier (1813-1888) - artist ("Currier and Ives")
- Bronson M. Cutting (1888-1935) - United States Senator from New Mexico (1927 - 1928; 1929 - 1935)
- James E. Davis (1962-2003) - assassinated City Councilman, was buried here for a few days, near a mausoleum containing the ashes of his assassin: On August 3, 2003, his family had his body exhumed and reintered in the Cemetery of the Evergreens.
- Richard Delafield (1798–1873) - Chief of Engineers and Superintendent of West Point
- Thomas Clark Durant (1820-1885) - key figure in building the First Transcontinental Railroad
- Charles Ebbets (1859-1925) - baseball team (Brooklyn Dodgers) owner; built Ebbets Field
- Charles Feltman (1841-1910) - claimed to be the first person to put a hot dog on a bun
- Joey Gallo (1929-1972), mobster
- Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-1869), composer
- Horace Greeley (1811-1872), unsuccessful US presidential candidate 1872; founder of the New York Tribune
- Robert Stockton Green (1831-1895), Governor of New Jersey
- Townsend Harris (1804-1878) - first U.S. Consul General to Japan
- William S. Hart (1864-1946), star of silent "Western" movies
- Thomas Hastings (1784-1872) - wrote the music to the hymn "Rock of Ages"
- Elias Howe (1819-1867), invented the sewing machine (see Walter Hunt)
- Walter Hunt (1785-1869) - invented the safety pin
- James Merritt Ives (1824-1895) - artist ("Currier and Ives")
- Leonard Jerome (1817-1891), entrepreneur, grandfather of Winston Churchill
- Laura Keene (1826-1873), actress (on stage when Lincoln was shot)
- Florence La Badie, (1888-1917), actress
- John La Farge (1835-1910), artist
- Laura Jean Libbey (1862-1924), popular "dime-store" novelist
- Brockholst Livingston, US Supreme Court Justice
- William Livingston (1723-1790), signer of the US Constitution; first Governor of New Jersey
- Pierre Lorillard IV (1833-1901), tobacco tycoon, introduced the tuxedo to the U.S.
- Henry James Montague (1840-1878), stage actor
- Lola Montez (1821-1861), actress; mistress of many notable men
- Samuel F.B. Morse (1791-1872), invented the telegraph
- Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965), journalist
- James Kirke Paulding (1779-1860), U.S. Secretary of the Navy under Martin Van Buren; thought to be "author" of "Peter picked a peck of pickled peppers", although it had already been published in children's primers in Britain as early as 1813.
- Samuel Reid (1783-1861), said to have designed the US flag
- Bill "The Butcher" Poole (1821-1855), a member of the Bowery Boys gang
- Alice Roosevelt (1861-1884) - first wife of US President Theodore Roosevelt
- Martha Bulloch Roosevelt (1834-1884), mother of US President Theodore Roosevelt
- Robert Roosevelt (1829-1906), uncle of US President Theodore Roosevelt
- Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. (1831-1878), father of US President Theodore Roosevelt
- Margaret Sanger (1879-1966), birth control advocate
- Ira Sankey (1840-1908), hymn composer
- F.A.O. Schwarz (Frederick Augustus Otto Schwarz) (1836-1911), toy store founder
- Henry Steinway (1797-1871), founder of Steinway & Sons, piano manufacturers
- William Steinway (1836-1896), son of Henry Steinway, and founder of Steinway, New York
- Francis Scott Street (1831-1883), publisher of Astounding
- Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933), artist
- Matilda (or Mathilda) Tone, widow of Irish rebel Wolfe Tone
- Juan Trippe (1899-1981), airline pioneer
- William Marcy "Boss" Tweed (1823-1878), notorious New York politician
- Frank Morgan Wupperman (1890-1949), played the character of the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz.
References
- Jehemiah Cleveland, Green-Wood Cemetery: A History from 1838 to 1864 Anderson and Archer (1866)
- New York Times; Corey Killgannon; The Ones Who Prepare the Ground for the Last Farewell; January 30, 2006
Archive
The Pierrepont papers, deposited at the Brooklyn Historical Society contain material concerning the organizing of Green-Wood Cemetery.See also
External links
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