Woodlawn Cemetery
400 acres of Gilded Age mausoleums and mature trees, free to walk, holding Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Herman Melville and much of the architecture that built New York.
- What it costs
- Free to enter and walk. Some guided tours are ticketed.
- Best in
- Spring, Fall, Summer
- Where
- 517 East 233rd Street, Bronx, NY 10470
- Official site
- woodlawn.org
It's a park that happens to be a cemetery
Woodlawn is a National Historic Landmark and a designed rural-style cemetery from 1863 — 400 acres of rolling landscape, mature specimen trees and winding roads, laid out to be walked in.
That was the intention from the start: before public parks were common, cemeteries like this were where city people went for a green afternoon. Using it that way is not disrespectful, it's the design brief.
It is free, open daily, and almost empty.
The jazz section
Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Celia Cruz, Max Roach, Lionel Hampton, King Oliver — an extraordinary density of American music history in one place.
Also here: Herman Melville, Nellie Bly, Fiorello La Guardia, Joseph Pulitzer, and the Woolworth, Belmont and Macy families.
Pick up a map at the gate or download one first — 400 acres is far too big to wander and hope.
The mausoleums
The Gilded Age families who built New York competed here, and hired the architects who built the city to do it. There are private mausoleums by McKim, Mead & White and by John Russell Pope, with Tiffany glass inside several of them.
It is, quite seriously, one of the best collections of American funerary architecture anywhere, and you can walk right up to all of it.
Tours and timing
The Woodlawn Conservancy runs guided walking tours on set weekends — jazz, architecture, women's history and others. Some are free, some ticketed. Check the schedule.
Fall is the best time: the tree collection is deliberate and mature, and it turns properly. Allow two hours minimum.
Gates close in the late afternoon and earlier in winter — confirm closing time before you go in, because 400 acres is a long way from the gate.
Getting there
The 4 to its last stop, Woodlawn, leaves you at the Jerome Avenue gate. About 45 minutes from Midtown.
The 2 or 5 to 233rd Street puts you at the eastern gate.
Metro-North's Harlem line stops at Woodlawn on some services, which is faster from Grand Central.
Getting around once you're there
The internal roads are paved, wide and drivable, and you may drive in — which makes it unusually accessible for a site this size. Individual plots are on grass and slopes. Woodlawn station on the 4 has stairs only.