Woodlawn Cemetery (Bronx, New York)


Woodlawn Cemetery is one of the largest cemeteries in New York City and a designated National Historic Landmark. Located in Woodlawn, Bronx, New York City, it has the character of a rural cemetery. Woodlawn Cemetery opened during the Civil War in 1863, in what was then southern Westchester County, in an area that was annexed to New York City in 1874. It is notable in part as the final resting place of some well known figures.

Locale and grounds

The Cemetery covers more than and is the resting place for more than 300,000 people. Built on rolling hills, its tree-lined roads lead to some unique memorials, some designed by famous American architects: McKim, Mead & White, John Russell Pope, James Gamble Rogers, Cass Gilbert, Carrère and Hastings, Sir Edwin Lutyens, Beatrix Jones Farrand, and John La Farge. The cemetery contains seven Commonwealth war graves – six British and Canadian servicemen of World War I and an airman of the Royal Canadian Air Force of World War II. In 2011, Woodlawn Cemetery was designated a National Historic Landmark, since it shows the transition from the rural cemetery popular at the time of its establishment to the more orderly 20th-century cemetery style.
As of 2007, plot prices at Woodlawn were reported as $200 per square foot, $4,800 for a gravesite for two, and up to $1.5 million for land to build a family mausoleum.

Burials moved to Woodlawn

Woodlawn was the destination for many human remains disinterred from cemeteries in more densely populated parts of New York City:
The fictional cemetery of the Synagogue in Brooklyn in the film Once Upon a Time in America is actually located here, renamed "Riverdale Cemetery".

Notable burials

Numerous notable persons have been interred at Woodlawn Cemetery including George M Cohan, authors Countee Cullen, Nellie Bly, and Herman Melville, musicians Irving Berlin, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, W. C. Handy, Fritz Kreisler and Max Roach, singers
Florence Mills, Celia Cruz, husband and wife magicians Alexander Herrmann and Adelaide Herrmann, sportswriter Grantland Rice, along with businessmen such as shipping magnate Archibald Gracie and department store founder, Rowland Hussey Macy.

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