Green-Wood Cemetery Gates
500 25th Street | also 500 20th Street | Green-Wood Cemetery | built 1930
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1838
Green-Wood Cemetery is established on the high ground of Greenwood Heights
Green-Wood was established in 1838. A new kind of city cemetery had taken shape at Mount Auburn in Cambridge, Massachusetts, America's first park-like rural cemetery, and Henry Evelyn Pierrepont, counted among Brooklyn's leading citizens, liked the idea. The high ground of Greenwood Heights, formed by a glacial moraine, suited a large park with winding lanes and vistas.
Source: brownstoner.com
- 1850
Green-Wood draws thousands of visitors, outdone only by Niagara Falls
By the 1850s Green-Wood had become a popular tourist spot, drawing thousands of visitors, and only Niagara Falls attracted more. The ornate brownstone main gate and chapel that now stand at 25th Street were still to come, with work beginning in 1861.
Source: brownstoner.com
- 1861
Richard M. Upjohn & Son build a Gothic gateway with a clock tower, offices and chapel
Work on the Twenty-fifth Street gateway began in 1861 and finished in 1865, to designs by Richard M. Upjohn & Son. Two main gates flank a clock tower, with the cemetery offices attached on one side and, on the other, a chapel with a reception room for visitors. Sculptured bas reliefs fill the recessed pointed arches above the gates, and the flanking buildings have low slate roofs.
- 1966
The Landmarks Commission designates the cemetery gates with their chapel and office
On April 19, 1966 the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Green-Wood Cemetery Gates, including the attached chapel and office. At the February 8 hearing two speakers favored designation and none opposed it. The commission ranked the gateway among the outstanding monuments of the late Gothic Revival and noted that Green-Wood, like Mount Auburn, was an early cemetery in a natural setting.
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