Greenwood Cemetery

Greenwood Cemetery may refer to any of the following in the United States:

By state

Green-Wood Cemetery

Green-Wood Cemetery was founded in 1838 as a rural cemetery in Kings County,New York. It was granted National Historic Landmark status in 2006 by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Located in Greenwood Heights, Brooklyn, it lies several blocks southwest of Prospect Park, between Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Borough Park, Kensington, and Sunset Park. Paul Goldberger in The New York Times, wrote that it was said "it is the ambition of the New Yorker to live upon the Fifth Avenue, to take his airings in the Park, and to sleep with his fathers in Green-Wood".

The Pierrepont papers deposited at the Brooklyn Historical Society contain material about the organizing of Green-Wood Cemetery.

History

Inspired by Pére Lachaise Cemetery in Paris and Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where a cemetery in a naturalistic park-like landscape in the English manner was first established, Green-Wood was able to take advantage of the varied topography provided by glacial moraines. Battle Hill, the highest point in Brooklyn and built in 1838, is on cemetery grounds, rising approximately 200 feet above sea level. As such, there on that spot in 1920, was erected a Revolutionary War monument by Frederick Ruckstull, Altar to Liberty: Minerva. From this height, the bronze Minerva statue gazes towards The Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

Cemetery

A cemetery or graveyard is a place where the remains of deceased people are buried or otherwise interred. The word cemetery (from Greek κοιμητήριον, "sleeping place") implies that the land is specifically designated as a burial ground. The older term graveyard is often used interchangeably with cemetery, but primarily referred to a burial ground within a churchyard.

The intact or cremated remains of people may be interred in a grave, commonly referred to as burial, or in a tomb, an "above-ground grave" (resembling a sarcophagus), a mausoleum, columbarium, niche, or other edifice. In Western cultures, funeral ceremonies are often observed in cemeteries. These ceremonies or rites of passage differ according to cultural practices and religious beliefs. Modern cemeteries often include crematoria, and some grounds previously used for both, continue as crematoria as a principal use long after the interment areas have been filled.

Definition

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a cemetery as a "burial-ground generally; now esp. a large public park or ground laid out expressly for the interment of the dead, and not being the ‘yard’ of any church. (Cemetery c)" and specifies that the term "...originally applied to the Roman underground cemeteries or catacombs " Cemeteries are normally distinct from churchyards, which are typically consecrated according to one denomination and are attached directly to a single place of worship.