Green-Wood: A Unique Outdoor Classroom

Green-Wood is many things to many people. For some, it is a place of history. To others, it is a bird-watcher’s paradise. To still others, it is an arboretum; others think of it as a garden. And others think of it as a great big classroom. Last week, a guest artist and two instructors from … Read more

Coincidence? Or Something More?

We have a new Historic Fund volunteer–Patty. She was interested in doing something, and, it turned out, she is quite the genealogical researcher. Once I learned that, I suggested that she might do follow-up research on the biographies of some of our Civil War veterans, looking for census entries, obituaries, and more, to improve their … Read more

Pierrepont Family Memorial, Almost 160 Years Later

Fifteen years ago, at the end of a Green-Wood tour that I was leading, a gentleman approached me, pulled out a photograph of a drawing, and asked me if there was a monument at Green-Wood that looked like that. I immediately recognized it as the Pierrepont Family Memorial. It turned out that the man with … Read more

Tiffany Window: Discovered, But Still Closeted

Two of Green-Wood’s permanent residents, Louis Comfort Tiffany and John La Farge, were pioneers of American stained glass in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tiffany and his studio were prolific–they so dominated stained glass lamp manufacturing that virtually any stained glass lamp, whether by Tiffany or someone else, is now referred to as … Read more

“Granite Is Forever”

There are Green-Wood connections everywhere. My favorite place to visit: Mount Desert Island, along the Maine coast, on which are located Acadia National Park and the village of Bar Harbor. I’ve been up there many times–probably 25 times over a period of 40 years. And it has always been great. On my latest trip, I … Read more

Discovered: J.P. Reynolds, Artist

On December 23, 2010, I blogged about a painting I had just purchased on behalf of the Green-Wood Historic Fund that memorialized the Civil War career of Major Edward Marrenner. I explained how happy I was to have acquired it and that I had never seen anything like it. Well, now we know quite a … Read more

“The Two Orphans,” With A New Home

We continue to collect items, on behalf of our Historic Fund, to tell the story of Green-Wood and its permanent residents. Several months ago, I learned from Sarah Simms, one of our volunteers, that Dr. Stanley Burns and The Burns Collection, for whom she works as librarian and cataloguer, had a wonderful album in their … Read more

The Spoon River Project

THE LATE SHOW: OUTDOOR THEATER COMES TO GREEN-WOOD with THE SPOON RIVER PROJECT   Imagine sitting deep within Green-Wood Cemetery on a beautiful summer’s night when some of its permanent residents begin to appear in the distance, assemble in front of you, and one by one divulge their secrets, their private thoughts, their regrets and … Read more