History of the City of New York - Field Trip 24

Greenwood Cemetery

Close-up of the gate

In 1800, cemeteries in the city were in terrible conditions. Each church had a cemetery; below City Hall Park alone were 33 of them. Finally, the city passes an ordinance forbidding any more burials on the island of Manhattan. Henry Pierpont had the idea to put a cemetery in Brooklyn, so in 1838 he began buying property from a farmer. Greenwood cemetery opened in 1840, but for the first few years no one came. One idea was to use the cemetery for picnics, but even though this was before both Prospect and Central Parks, people still didn't use Greenwood. The turning point in Greenwood's popularity was the death of NY Governor, Senator, and Mayor DeWitt Clinton. The proprietors of the cemetery managed to convince Clinton's widow to bury the great statesman in Greenwood by promising to erect a great memorial to him. She agreed, and the cemetery took off. Today, there are over 600,000 people buried there, among them 56 Union generals, and the second highest number of politicians in the country.

The cemetery covers 478 acres, and used to have seven lakes and 30 miles of footpaths. Some of those have now been filled in. Greenwood was a huge tourist attraction, second only to Niagra Falls. Lots of postcards showed places in Greenwood cemetery. As we walked along, Cashman pointed out various graves and memorials. We saw a tremendous amount, and it was only one of five tours he gives of Greenwood, and each of them is different! Some of the memorials we saw were:

DeWitt Clinton's memorial

• Jackie Gardner - his mother Isabelle Stewart Gardner lived on Park Avenue (very rich). When Jackie died, she was heartbroken. His mausoleum was designed by Stanford White (designer of the original MSG) and the panels on it were sculpted by Auguste St. Gaudens. Isabelle then went to Europe and bought lots of things. She built a huge house near Boston but was never really accepted by society there.
• Henry Berg - the founder of the ASPCA.
• Louis Bonard - he invented a brickmaking machine and a hat-making loom. He was very cheap and lived in a ramshackle house. On his deathbed he asked for Henry Berg and left the ASPCA $150,000 (current value: $4 million) because he didn't know whether he was coming back as a cat or a dog, and wanted to be cared for.
• Obelisk for the victims of the Brooklyn Theater Fire - 1876. There was only one stairway in the theater. Most of the bodies were unidentifiable. 103 of 278 were buried in a mass grave in Greenwood.
• Alice and Phoebe Cary - Famous poets who died within five months of each other. Alice was the first President of the first women's club in America. People used to be invited to their house for a poetry reading. Only the creme de la creme of society got invitations to the Carys.

The Pyramid tomb

The memorial to DeWitt Clinton is really large. It was designed by Henry Brown. Clinton was the "Father of the Erie Canal," and was responsible for the public school system. Millard Fillmore, the 13th President, was on the commission to raise to money for Clinton's statue.

Francis Ward's monument, a little boy of limestone, was sculpted by Daniel Chester French, designer of the Lincoln Memorial and "The Minuteman." Greenwood has four types of burials: cremation, regular casket, mausoleums, and underground crypts, some with glass domes. Edwin Christie, writer of "Oh Susannah," "Camptown Races," "Beautiful Dreamer," and leader of the "Christie Minstrels" has one. He went insane and jumped out of a second-floor window.

There is a large mausoleum for tobacconist John Anderson. Anderson used his money to finance the Italian patriot Garibaldi. He also gave the governor of NY $600 to buy shoes for soldiers. There are 14 Medal of Honor winners buried in Greenwood. Anderson gave money for one of their monuments. The cemetery was open to all, but is populated primarily with WASPs, because Catholics and Jews used their own cemeteries.

Frederick Augustus Otto (F.A.O.) Schwarz and his family are there, as are Barney Williams, the Irish comic who was Lincoln's favorite performer, and Van Ness-Parsons. Van-Ness Parsons was a pianist, and the author of "New Light from the Pyramids," a best-seller. His tomb is a pyramid and has lots of Egyptian symbols, interspersed with statues of Jesus, the Madonna with Child and a Sphinx.

Cashman and the CW monument

On the highest point in the cemetery (also in Brooklyn) is a giant pillar and monument to Civil War soldiers from New York City - all 148,000 of them. The relief panels on the column's base show the story of the soldier: leaving home, going to battle, getting wounded. The statues of soldiers around the base used to have swords or guns but they fell apart.

A few meters from the Civil War Memorial is the "Altar to Liberty," in honor and memory of the Battle of Long Island in the Revolutionary War. The altar was erected by Higgins, the inventor of India ink. It is commonly held that the first engagement of that battle was on or very near the site of the altar. The memorial comprises a statue of Athena holding a wreath over a low altar. During the battle, two hundred soldiers from Maryland died to allow Washington and the rest of the Continental Army to escape. Every year since 1920, Marylanders have traveled up to Greenwood, where they hold a ceremony to commemorate the sacrifice of their countrymen. The statue of Athena is on a direct line-of-sight to the Statue of Liberty.

We stopped at Leonard Bernstein, whose footstone had a few rocks placed on it. It is a Jewish custom to palce small stones on the grave of someone you visit. We saw a memorial which had a plaque to Robert Douglas Spedden, a little boy who became something of a celebrity when he (and his stuffed polar bear doll) survived the Titanic. Unfortunately, he was also one of the first children killed in a car accident. We stood on a hill and saw the graves of Ebinger of Ebinger's bakery (which Cashman remembers with fondness) and Ebbets of Ebbets' Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Other people we saw:

• Alonzo B. See - of A.B. See Elevators. He broke away from Otis Elevators and became very rich. In 1922 he was asked to donate money to Adelphi College for Women. He said that all women's colleges should be burnt to the ground. This obviously caused a very big to-do, and in 1936 he recanted and admitted that women should have colleges.
• Walter Hunt - Inventor of the safety pin. he sold the rights to the pin for only $400. "His name would be obscured but without him we would be undone."
• Elias Howe - Inventor of the sewing machine. He couldn't sell it in NYC, home of the needle trades, so he went to Europe to explore that market. When he returned, he found that Singer had created his own machines and flooded the market. Howe took Singer to court and got $200,000 a year in royalties (equal to $5 million today).
• Marcus Howe - An Irish immigrant who came to America with $20. He bought an abandoned copper mine and struck a large vein of copper. His company became Anaconda Copper, and Howe became a billionaire. Howe's mausoleum cost $200,000 in 1900.
• Thomas Charles (T.C.) Durant - a doctor who left his profession to become VP of Union Pacific Railroad. He was a great advertiser. To raise money for the first inter-continental railroad, he used to take rich people on the train as far as it would go. Then they would be "attacked" by actors playing Indians who were hired by Durant for entertainment. When the Inter-continental RR was finished, Durant was picked to drive the golden (final) spike. On his way to the ceremony his train was stopped because of a blockage on the tracks. People got out to clear it and seven Irishmen jumped on thetrain and kidnapped Durant because he didn't pay some of his workers for five weeks. Durant finally made it to the ceremony, two days late and drunk, so someone else actually drove the final spike.
• James Gordon Bennett - Founder of the NY Herald.
• Jane Griffith - Her tombstone had a 3-D relief of her waving goodbye to her husband as he leaves for work. It even has a horse and streetcar on the corner.
• Henry J. Raymond - Founder of the New York Times and one of the first Republicans.
• John Matthews - owned 500 soda fountains. The columns on his monument depict his three favorite scenes: leaving England, sitting and trying to invent, and at a soda fountain.
• Charlotte Canda - was a young girl whose parents owned a finishing school for women. On her 17th birthday they took the girls to Delmonico's but when they stopped, and Mr. Canda got out to take one of the girls to her door, the horse bolted and Charlotte was killed. her parents found the design for her memorial on Charlotte's desk. She had designed it for an aunt, but her parents modified it to have a lot of things of seventeen.
• Dixon Hall Lewis - A Senator from Alabama. The only man to ever have two seats in the Senate - he weighed 400 pounds!

The tour is very fast-paced. It's sometimes hard to keep up with Cashman, because there's so much to see. Cashman like to quiz visitors on history, usually on obscure people. Most people don't know the answers. He says no one learns history anymore. Maybe history really is for losers!

Our last stop was the chapel, which was built over a filled-in lake. It was built in 1911 as a replica of Christchurch in Oxford by the same architects who designed Grand Central Station. It was needed when Greenwood was a popular cemetery, but it was closed in the seventies. Now it's being renovated. There is also an underground receiving hall that could hold 1400. It was used when the ground was too cold to break. The bodies were then buried in the spring. People used to come from all over the country to be buried in Greenwood Cemetery. The pace has slacked off somewhat, but it's always an amazing place to visit. There are four other tours to take with John Cashman, and they're definitely worth it.

By David Sanders