Green-Wood Cemetery

Some cities have an aura of death about them. Paris, New Orleans -- it doesn't take much to imagine a consumptive Moulin Rouge dancer, Baron Samedi following a second line, dissipation, voodoo, vampires, decay. Every guidebook ever written will tell you to visit St. Louis Cemetery Nos. 1-3, Lafayette Cemetery Nos. 1-2, Père Lachaise, Montmartre...

New York is a different story. I mean that literally: the narrative of this city does not lend itself to gothic glamour the way Paris' and New Orleans' do. This doesn't change the fact that we have some damn fine cemeteries of our own. The best, IMHO, is Green-Wood.

A few years ago I was working for an art copyright/licensing company. It was a decent stopgap -- they had health insurance and an unbeatable SoHo location, and I actually find copyright law pretty interesting -- but I wanted something a little more. One of my favorite classes in library school had been Conservation Lab, where we built archival boxes and bound books with fancy marbled Italian endpapers. It was tangibly satisfying, and I was good enough at it that the professor remembered me fondly and put me in touch with a colleague of his, who was also the archivist at Green-Wood Cemetery. For the next year, two mornings a week, I cleaned and bound books and encased blueprints in mylar. I enjoyed the work, but the best part was just being in Green-Wood that often.

Green-Wood Cemetery opened in 1838 as a solution to the problem of people dying in Manhattan. They needed somewhere out of town -- convenient enough for a day trip, but far enough that cholera wouldn't be a concern. So Green-Wood was built as a cemetery, but also, fundamentally, as a park. It was a bucolic escape from the city, the first large municipal green space here, years before Central or Prospect Park were a glimmer in Olmsted's eye. Visitors promenaded and picnicked and, from the tallest point in Brooklyn, looked out over the Harbor where one day the Statue of Liberty would stand.

With green areas multiplying across the city, Green-Wood doesn't see nearly the same level of visitors nowadays, but the ones who do make the trek are amply rewarded. There are all manner and design of mausoleums, a chapel that's a miniature of Christopher Wren's Tom Tower at Christchurch, weeping angels galore, and, of course, the parrots.

The story goes that some time in the 70s, a shipment of parrots escaped their crate at JFK. (Questions like: who was shipping them; how did they escape; and who ships crate-fulls of parrots anyway? remain unanswered.) They found their way west to Green-Wood, where the Gothic gates (designed by Richard Upjohn, the Trinity Church architect) proved an irresistible home. They've been there ever since. If you stand under the arches you can hear them squawking, and if you look up you can see how their nest is slowly consuming the top spire. They're monk parrots, and apparently their style of living -- communal, monastery style -- is responsible for their survival. Parrots that lived separately in individual nests would never last a winter here. Keep an eye on the ground too; you may find a bright green feather.

Green-Wood is also, thanks to Baked in Brooklyn, the best-smelling cemetery in the world. Unfortunately picnics are no longer allowed, but if you pick up a muffin and walk around eating it, no one's going to complain. Green-Wood also holds regular special events, often in the evening. There are daylight tours too, both official ones with the cemetery historian and others.

Everyone comes to NY and sees a Broadway show; hardly anyone comes to NY and sees a candlelit circus in a cemetery. Check it out.

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RECIPE: Turkey Chili. Pretty much the only time I'll allow ground turkey in the house. This one's a crowd-pleaser.