Green-Wood Cemetery

Green-Wood was founded in 1838 as one of America's first rural, or garden, cemeteries, part of a movement that rejected the crowded, grim churchyards of the past in favor of spacious, beautifully landscaped grounds set on the edge of the growing city. Its designers used the natural glacial hills and hollows of the site to create a picturesque landscape of curving drives, plantings, and vistas.

The idea proved wildly popular. By the 1850s Green-Wood had become one of the most-visited places in the nation, with families arriving to picnic, promenade, and take in the scenery. Its success helped inspire the movement for public parks, and the men who later designed Central Park and Prospect Park drew directly on the example of landscapes like this one. In a real sense, the American public park grew out of the garden cemetery.

The cemetery's highest point, Battle Hill, saw hard fighting in August 1776 during the Battle of Brooklyn, the first major battle after the Declaration of Independence and the largest of the entire war. American troops fought a delaying action across these heights as the far larger British army advanced, and though the Americans were driven back, the stand helped Washington's army escape to fight another day.

Today a statue of Minerva stands atop Battle Hill, raised to mark the battle and positioned to gaze out toward the Statue of Liberty in the harbor. From this high ground the view stretches across Brooklyn and the water to the skyline of Lower Manhattan, a reminder that this quiet ridge was once a battlefield at the birth of the nation.

Green-Wood is an open-air museum of 19th and early 20th-century monument art, from soaring Gothic spires and marble angels to elaborate family mausoleums built like miniature temples. The grand entrance gate itself is a masterpiece of Gothic Revival design, its brownstone pinnacles rising over the main gate.

Beneath the monuments lie generations of New Yorkers, among them inventors, artists, politicians, tycoons, musicians, and countless ordinary citizens whose lives made the city. The composer and bandleader whose music defined an era, painters, a famous inventor of the telegraph, baseball pioneers, and Civil War soldiers all rest here. Walking the grounds is a way to read the whole social history of New York carved in stone.

Beyond its history, Green-Wood is one of the largest green spaces in Brooklyn, and it has become an accidental sanctuary for wildlife in the heart of the city. Its old trees, ponds, and quiet hills draw an astonishing variety of birds, and it is a well-known spot for birdwatchers, especially during spring and fall migration when warblers, hawks, and waterfowl pass through.

The most famous residents are the wild monk parakeets, bright green birds descended from escaped pets, who have built their bulky stick nests in the towers of the Gothic entrance gate for decades. Turtles bask in the ponds, and the flowering trees put on a show each spring. For a city cemetery, it is remarkably full of life, a hushed, living landscape wrapped around its monuments and memory.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.