NRHP Reference # 11000563 Founded 1863 Added to NRHP 23 June 2011 | Designated NHL June 23, 2011 Phone +1 718-920-0500 | |
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Location Webster Avenue and East 233rd Street
Woodlawn, The Bronx, The Bronx Address 517 East 233rd Street, Bronx, NY 10470, USA Hours Open today · 8:30AM–4:30PMWednesday8:30AM–4:30PMThursday8:30AM–4:30PMFriday8:30AM–4:30PMSaturday8:30AM–4:30PMSunday8:30AM–4:30PMMonday8:30AM–4:30PMTuesday8:30AM–4:30PMSuggest an edit Burials Celia Cruz, Miles Davis, Herman Melville, Duke Ellington Similar Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, Pelham Bay Park, Van Cortlandt Park, Wave Hill, Green‑Wood Cemetery Profiles | ||
Woodlawn Cemetery is one of the largest cemeteries in New York City and is a designated National Historic Landmark. Located in Woodlawn, Bronx, New York City , it has the character of a rural cemetery. Woodlawn Cemetery opened in 1863, in what was then southern Westchester County, in an area that would be annexed to New York City in 1874. It is notable in part as the final resting place of some great figures in the American arts, such as authors Countee Cullen and Herman Melville, and musicians Irving Berlin, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, W. C. Handy, and Max Roach. Holly Woodlawn, after changing her name to such, falsely told people she was the heiress to Woodlawn Cemetery.
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Locale and grounds
The Cemetery covers more than 400 acres (160 ha) and is the resting place for more than 300,000 people. It is also the site of the "Annie Bliss Titanic Memorial", dedicated to those who perished in the 1912 maritime disaster. 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 Once Upon a Time in America is moved here, while naming the place "Riverdale Cemetery".