3/16/2024 0 Comments Charles higgins india ink![]() ![]() While the cemetery still welcomes all visitors, it is home to over 560,000 permanent residents. By 1860, more than 500,000 people were visiting the cemetery every year. Both Central and Prospect Park were yet to be constructed and few of our now iconic cultural institutions existed, so Green-Wood Cemetery became a popular escape from the already crowded New York City (Brooklyn was still its own independent city at the time). The creators were said to have been inspired by the inviting greenery of Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris and the Magnificent Seven cemeteries in London. So the opening of Green-Wood, one of America’s first “rural” cemeteries, in 1838 was a bit of a spectacle. ![]() When Green-Wood Cemetery first opened, most people didn’t think of cemeteries the way we do today because people were typically buried in local churchyards. The Minerva Statue in Green-Wood Cemetery He made his fortune with Higgins India Ink, which you can still buy today. Minerva was originally meant to gaze toward the Woolworth Building, a symbol of American commerce and prosperity as Charles Higgins, who funded the statue was a businessman himself. A monument to the battle, a statue of Minerva, the Roman goddess of war, was later erected on the hill and stares toward the Statue of Liberty and he statues’ views of one another are protected from development in perpetuity. The deadliest fighting of the battle took place on a 220-foot-tall bluff (the highest natural point in the borough) that would take the name Battle Hill in memory of the fighting. The area was host to the 1776 Battle of Brooklyn, the largest battle of the American Revolution. The land that became the cemetery was selected for its rolling hills and ponds, created by the movements of Ice Age glaciers across Long Island. ![]() and to sleep with his fathers in Green-Wood,” an article in The New York Times said in 1866. “It is the ambition of the New Yorker to live upon the Fifth Avenue. This summer, we’ll dive into the history of our newest venues and we start with Green-Wood Cemetery, host to Opening Night, Damsel, New York Nonfiction and more to be announced soon. ![]()
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