Green-Wood Cemetery is a National Historic Landmark site located between the Sunset Park and Park Slope neighborhoods in Brooklyn. I visited for the first time yesterday with my younger daughter. Even though it was a grey overcast day with occasional drizzles, we had a fine time walking around a smallish part of the 478 acres of hills, valleys, ponds and paths. It is the resting place of many ntable persons and their families, including Leonard Bernstein, Horace Greely, Charles Ebbets, Frank Morgan Wupperman (who played the Wizard of Oz), Henry Rutgers, and Elias Howe (inventor of the sewing machine).

My daughter and I visited the grave sites of corrupt Tammany Hall NYC politician “Boss” Tweed, and Samuel Morse, who invested the telegraph code. In addition, we were lucky enough to pass by the mausoleum of the Steinway piano manufacturing family, which was open for visitors to enter. Their mausoleum can hold 120 remains, and still has room to accept new interments, with the most recent happening a few years ago.

The statues and mausoleums are beautiful, as are the grounds themselves. This is a relatively simple plot, featuring no major statues or structures yet elegant in its simplicity. For the most part our visit was timed too early in the season for fall colors. The bed of fallen leaves in this area provided one of the largest instances of fall coloring we found.