Green-Wood Cemetery New York City

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Green-Wood Cemetery

Green-Wood Cemetery was founded in 1838 as a rural cemetery in Kings County, New York, now in Brooklyn. 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 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 (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).” A descendent colony of Monk parakeets that were stow-aways on containers from South America to Idlewild International Airport (today JFK) in the 1960s today nest in the center spire of the gate.