If 1 were to ask me the 2 most beautiful, historic, aesthetically pleasing, and artistically…read moreenriching cemeteries in the northern U.S. (maybe the entire U.S.), I'd have to say it's a toss-up between Greenwood in Brooklyn, and Woodlawn in the Bronx.
My personal favorite? Impossible to say; I love them both, even though I haven't been to either 1 in several years. Maybe Greenwood, because it's easier to get to.
I first came to Woodlawn in the late 80s with my father, who wanted to look up the grave of his maternal grandfather. We stopped at the main office, which looked as if it hadn't been updated or refurbished since the time "Cemetery John engaged "Jafsie" Condon through the cemetery fence during futile negotiations for the return of the Lindbergh baby. However, cemetery staff were very helpful and we found the gravesite easily thanks to the map they provided.
The cemetery itself is enormous, and enormously impressive. Its 1st burial occurring in 1865, Woodlawn is a 400-acre oasis of architectural splendor, pastoral loveliness, and restorative tranquility in the center of the Bronx. It's the last resting place for robber barons from the "Gilded Age" like Jay Gould and John "Bet A Million" Gates to humble artists like Herman Melville (his modest tombstone has the engraving of a blank sheet of paper on it) to statesmen like Fiorello LaGuardia (a friend said, "The Christian concept of Heaven was very real to him, except he believed it was achievable on earth, and, if he only hurried, possible in his lifetime.") and Ralph Bunche, to criminals like Ruth Snyder (her murder of her husband, accomplished with the aid of her lover, served as the basic plot for the classic film "Double Indemnity") and Charles Becker (a crooked cop executed in 1915 for the murder of gambler Herman Rosenthal, although he may have actually been innocent of that particular crime) to mobster Frank Scalise (his fatal shooting while buying fruit from a Bronx fruit stand was re-created in "The Godfather") to those you least expect, like Western lawman Bat Masterson.
The more ornate, elaborate mausoleums resemble hilltop castles, a stark contrast to the tombs of the more humble "permanent residents" (like my great grandfather).
Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and George M. Cohan are buried here. So is poor, luckless actress Diane Barrymore, daughter of John Barrymore and author of the book "Too Much, Too Soon." She died too young as a suicide and is buried in the plot of her mother's family. A multitude of family names are on the stone, with the exception of hers.
I've always been haunted by some of the highly realistic and sometimes disturbingly lifelike statuary populating the cemetery. One in particular is of a lifesized nude woman (tastefully rendered) sitting alongside a grave in eternal mourning, or until she ultimately crumbles into dust.
In turns mournful, sad, historic, lovely (in spite of the sometimes grim reality of the Bronx surrounding it), Woodlawn is a must visit cemetery on your list, if you visit any cemetery at all (although Greenwood in Brooklyn is in the running, as I've mentioned). If you're interested in the history of cemeteries, or of NYC, or just in history itself, Woodlawn is a repository of it all.
