Brooklyn's 1838 Rural Cemetery on Sunset Park's Heights
500 25th St, Brooklyn, NY 11232
Research updated May 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free to enter during posted hours; paid guided tours and trolley tours offered through the Green-Wood Historic Fund.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved roads and grassy hillsides on a 478-acre kettle-and-kame terminal moraine
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1838 · National Historic Landmark · American Rural Cemetery Movement · Battle of Brooklyn Site
Green-Wood Cemetery was founded in 1838 by a group of civic leaders headed by Henry Evelyn Pierrepont, who purchased 178 acres of farmland on the terminal moraine ridge running through what is now Sunset Park. Modeled on Boston's Mount Auburn Cemetery (1831) and Philadelphia's Laurel Hill (1836), Green-Wood was part of the first American generation of large, landscaped, non-sectarian, picturesque rural cemeteries.
By the 1860s the cemetery had grown beyond its primary role. With 500,000 annual visitors, it was the second-most-visited tourist attraction in New York State, trailing only Niagara Falls. New York families took carriage rides through the rolling drives; Brooklyn picnicked among the monuments. The popularity of Green-Wood and its peers directly inspired the creation of Central Park, which opened in 1858 to provide an alternative recreational landscape.
Architect Richard Upjohn — known principally for Trinity Church, Wall Street — designed the cemetery's brownstone Gothic Revival main gatehouse in 1861. The clock-tower entrance remains the cemetery's defining architectural feature.
The cemetery's high point at Battle Hill — the highest natural elevation in Brooklyn at 220 feet — was the site of decisive action during the Battle of Brooklyn (August 27, 1776), the largest battle of the Revolutionary War. The Altar to Liberty monument marks the engagement. Notable interments include 16 Union generals and 2 Confederate generals; American composer Leonard Bernstein; painter Jean-Michel Basquiat; stained-glass artist Louis Comfort Tiffany; Tammany Hall boss William 'Boss' Tweed; Brooklyn Dodgers owner Charles Ebbets; newspaper editor Horace Greeley; and inventor Samuel F.B. Morse. Green-Wood was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006.
Sources
Green-Wood's reputation in dark-tourism circles rests overwhelmingly on the density and quality of its historical content rather than on a specific paranormal narrative. The cemetery does not run ghost tours, and the Green-Wood Historic Fund's programming explicitly frames itself as historical, ecological, and architectural interpretation. Independent Brooklyn ghost walks reference the cemetery in passing but operate outside the gates.
Visitor accounts collected on Atlas Obscura and other aggregators describe quiet phenomena: a sense of presence among the older nineteenth-century mausolea on Battle Hill, occasional voices heard in still air near the Catacombs (a row of 30 underground vaults built into the slope in the 1850s), and figures in nineteenth-century dress glimpsed at dusk. The Catacombs are normally locked; access is by special tour only.
The Civil War sections — including a substantial Union soldiers' lot — are the focus of reports from Civil War-history visitors who describe a particular stillness near the soldiers' monument and adjacent rows. Green-Wood interpretive staff acknowledge the long tradition of such reports without endorsing them as paranormal phenomena.
Enter through Richard Upjohn's 1861 Gothic Revival gatehouse and walk 478 acres of rural-style cemetery. Among the notables: Leonard Bernstein, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Boss Tweed, Charles Ebbets, Horace Greeley, Samuel F.B. Morse, and sixteen Union generals.
The Historic Fund runs themed tours year-round: Civil War walking tours covering the Battle of Brooklyn, after-hours specialty programs, and trolley tours of the larger 478-acre landscape. Programs are publicized on the Green-Wood Historic Fund site.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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