Green-Wood Cemetery
478 acres of hills, ponds and Victorian monuments that were New York's biggest tourist attraction after Niagara Falls in the 1860s — free to walk, and home to a colony of wild parrots.
- What it costs
- Free to enter and walk. Guided tours and the trolley tour are ticketed.
- Best in
- Spring, Fall, Summer
- Where
- 500 25th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11232
- Official site
- green-wood.com
It was a tourist attraction first
Founded in 1838, and by the 1860s Green-Wood was drawing half a million visitors a year — second only to Niagara Falls among American attractions. Its popularity is a direct reason Central Park and Prospect Park exist: cities saw the demand for green space and built parks to meet it.
The Gothic Revival main gate alone is worth the trip, and a colony of wild monk parakeets has nested in its spires since the 1970s. You will hear them before you see them.
Battle Hill and the view
Battle Hill is the highest natural point in Brooklyn, and the site of fighting during the Battle of Long Island in 1776. From the top you get a wide view across the harbor to Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty.
It is a proper climb. Worth it.
Who's here
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Leonard Bernstein, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Samuel Morse, Horace Greeley, Boss Tweed, and around 570,000 others.
Green-Wood runs an active cultural program — concerts in the chapel, night tours, historical walks — much of which is ticketed but reasonably priced. Get a map at the gate; the grounds are enormous and deliberately disorienting.
Getting there
The R to 25th Street puts you at the main gate. About 35 minutes from Midtown.
The F or G to 15th Street–Prospect Park is a ten-minute walk to the northern entrance.
Prospect Park is fifteen minutes' walk north, so the two combine into one long green day.
Getting around once you're there
The internal roads are paved and drivable, but the terrain is genuinely hilly — this is a glacial moraine and the grades are real. Battle Hill is a climb. The main gate area and the lower roads are manageable; the upper sections are not, for most wheelchair users.