View of Brooklyn with Extension of Green-Wood Cemetery, New York

Artist/Maker Charles Magnus & Company (1854–1900)

View of Brooklyn with Extension of Green-Wood Cemetery, New York

ca. 1880

Place madeNew York, United States, North America

Black ink, collage, white gouache, lead white pigment, and graphite on two sheet of paper, laid on a sepia photograph, laid on card

Mount: 12 × 14 3/4 in. (30.5 × 37.5 cm)
Sheet: 10 × 14 in. (25.4 × 35.6 cm)

Z.3378

With Manhattan’s church graveyards becoming increasingly crowded, more burial space was desperately needed. Green-Wood Cemetery was founded in 1838 in then rural Brooklyn. Designed by landscape architect David Bates Douglass (1790-1849), it was one of the country’s first rural cemeteries featuring hills, trees, ponds and paths in a park-like setting. People flocked to the new cemetery for picnics, promenades, and carriage rides, and by the 1860s, it was a tourist destination. This drawing from the 1880s depicts one of the many extensions added to Green-Wood Cemetery since its inception. In the drawing, the city of Brooklyn goes right up to the edge of the cemetery, streetcars are on the roads, and the Brooklyn Bridge is visible in the distance. In the foreground, people are enjoying the cemetery’s lawn and women are strolling with parasols. Green-Wood is on the National Register of Historic Places and is a National Historic Landmark.

DescriptionCityscape

InscribedCard inscribed at lower right edge in brown ink: "the Grave Plot to be filled with People"; verso of card inscribed at centered inverted in graphite: "D-H. Streets"

ClassificationsDRAWINGS