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These Photos And Videos Will Fly You Over Green-Wood Cemetery
By
Jen Chung
Published Jun 12, 2019
Modified Jun 12, 2019
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By
Jen Chung
Published Jun 12, 2019
Modified Jun 12, 2019
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The lush grounds of Green-Wood Cemetery is home to 560,000 "permanent residents," encompassing 478 acres just southwest of Prospect Park. In fact, the cemetery's design inspired Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux's Prospect Park, which opened nearly 30 years after Green-Wood was founded.
Green-Wood is the resting place of notable names like artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, conductor Leonard Bernstein, the infamous Boss Tweed, and the first black female doctor in New York State Susan Smith McKinney-Steward, but it's also notable itself, for being the highest point in Brooklyn. Battle Hill hits the 220-foot mark, and was the site of a Revolutionary War battle—and it's also where you can get a view of the Statue of Liberty, alongside a statue of Minerva saluting "her sister in the harbor."
We have some new aerial views of Green-Wood—the footage will fly you over the stunning Gothic revival architecture and many intricate tombs and monuments. You'll also notice a huge bird's nest around the entrance's spire—there's good birdwatching there, as about 150 birds species visit the cemetery each year—and the thousands of trees and shrubs that remain. The cemetery was carved out of native forest, and it was accredited as an arboretum in 2015.
You can visit the cemetery every day, but there are a few after-hours events as well, which give you a more otherworldly sense of the space. For instance, this Friday, Rooftop Films is screening a number of New York City-related short films (disclosure: I'm a judge, as is my WNYC colleague Jim O'Grady!).
As Marc Yearsley wrote about Green-Wood for Gothamst in 2015:
Cemeteries “matter” in a weird way. Old cemeteries render a usually monolithic History in an idiosyncratic way, through individual and often minor lives, bearing a kind of cultural significance that you can't get from a museum. (In the '90s, every Halloween movie or TV show involved being in a cemetery at night at some point, but I feel like that isn't really a popular trope anymore.)
And Green-Wood is a very cool part of American History—the guy who is credited with inventing the fastball is buried there! So is—that’s right, you guessed it, the one, the only, Eli Siegel, founder of Aesthetic Realism! Also, R.I.P. Charlotte Canda, debutante killed in a carriage accident in 1845.
Green-Wood Cemetery is open 365 days a year; check visiting hours here.
Tagged
brooklyn
green-wood cemetery
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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