Tuesday, April 15, was a rainy and windy day. Winter trying to slide back in for a final run. It was a good day to finish up your taxes. But it was an even better day to honor America’s first baseball hero, James Creighton. It was Jim’s 173rd birthday. So, who was this James Creighton? … Read more
No, Lord Grantham from Downton Abbey is not interred at Green-Wood. But there is something of a connection between Green-Wood and Downton Abbey. At least there is for me. Just about every year, in March, I drive down to Washington for an antique photo show. I have collected stereoscopic views of New York City, and … Read more
The New York Landmarks Conservancy’s Lucy G. Moses Awards Committee has announced that the recently completed restoration project of the Green-Wood Cemetery Gatehouse at the Fort Hamilton Parkway entrance has been selected to receive a 2013 Preservation Project Award. Platt Byard Dovell White Architects, which worked on the restoration from 2010 to 2013, led by … Read more
I recently was contacted by Will Ellis, a photographer who was interested in doing a photo essay on Green-Wood. Here’s how Will describes himself on his website: Will Ellis is a Brooklyn-based photographer, videographer, and editor, and the founder of Abandoned NYC. His photographic work has taken him across the five boroughs to document a … Read more
Where has Anthony Berger gone? In the 1860s, Anthony Berger ran Mathew Brady’s Washington D.C. National Photographic Art Gallery. It was Berger who, during the Civil War, took some of the most famous portraits of President Abraham Lincoln. But, as noted in Mathew Brady and His World, “[c]amera operators came and went . . .” … Read more
I started practicing law, fresh out of N.Y.U. Law School, in 1974. I worked representing indigent criminal defendants for the next 33 years, both at the trial and the appellate level. I enjoyed that work very much–I have always been a fan of the underdog, and little is more underdog that someone arrested and accused … Read more
I went up to Columbia University a few weeks ago to do some research on William F. Mangels. We are working on an exhibition in Green-Wood’s Historic Chapel, “William F. Mangels: Amusement Park King.” It was Mangels who invented many rides, including The Whip and The Tickler, and also pioneered the wave pool. He made … Read more
With over half a million people interred at Green-Wood, and tens of thousands of monuments across its grounds, Green-Wood has connections to many subjects. So it is with “The American West in Bronze, 1850-1925,” an exhibition that has just opened at The Metropolitan Museum: many of the sculptors whose work is on display also created … Read more
In Green-Wood’s early years, its visitors’ entrance was along 24th Street. However, when bars sprung up along the access road just outside the cemetery, Green-Wood decided it had to move its entrance. So, in 1860, Green-Wood hired Richard Upjohn, the first president of the American Institute of Architects, and his son, Richard Michell Upjohn, to … Read more
Green-Wood Cemetery is, at its core, a place of burial and mourning. But, it is much more than that. Since its founding in 1838, Green-Wood has functioned at many levels: quasi public park, sculpture garden, arboretum, bird habitat, and more. Historically, there has been a tension at Green-Wood over these layers of usage. In the … Read more