Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn

Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, was consecrated in 1838 on 478 acres of glacial moraine hills in the Sunset Park neighborhood, and for two decades before Central Park's completion in the 1870s it served as New York City's primary public green space, attracting 500,000 visitors annually for picnicking, sculpture viewing, and recreational walks. The cemetery was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006 for its significance to American funerary art, landscape design, and cultural history. The grounds roll across hills and valleys of glacial deposit, with winding carriage drives, glacial ponds, and mature specimen trees forming a landscape that exemplifies the Rural Cemetery movement design principles of the 19th century. The Gothic Revival brownstone entrance gates on 25th Street at Fifth Avenue, designed by Richard Upjohn and completed in 1875, are themselves a landmark of 19th-century ecclesiastical architecture in New York. The cemetery's permanent residents include Boss Tweed, the Tammany Hall political operative; Leonard Bernstein, composer of West Side Story; Jean-Michel Basquiat, the painter; and tens of thousands of Civil War soldiers in a dedicated veterans section. The highest point in the cemetery — Battle Hill, at 216 feet above sea level — is the highest natural point in Brooklyn, offering views of Lower Manhattan, New York Harbor, and the Statue of Liberty. The cemetery is open to the public free of charge throughout the year, with maps available at the main gate for self-guided tours, and runs a well-regarded program of public tours, concerts, and cultural events across the calendar.