Woodlawn Cemetery

Covering over 400 acres of land in memorials and gravestones, the Woodlawn Cemetery is widely known as one of the largest and most elegant cemeteries in New York City.

Its 1,300 mausoleums run the gamut of architectural styles, including the Art Nouveau tomb of Titanic victims Isidor and Ida Straus and the Egyptian Modern mausoleum of the Woolworths. Founded in 1863 during the rural cemetery movement, the cemetery contains around 300,000 tombs.

From the family mausoleums of New York’s richest residents to the victims of the 1918 flu epidemic, celebrities and criminals alike rest in the large cemetery. Joseph Pulitzer and Miles Davis share Woodlawn with Ruth Brown Snyder, the first female to be executed by electric chair for murdering her husband.

Other notable memorials include the Annie Bliss Titanic memorial, dedicated to the victims of the RMS Titanic disaster of 1912. There is also the Belmont mausoleum, a scale replica of Da Vinci’s Chapel of Saint-Hubert, which holds the body of Oliver Belmont, founder of the Belmont Horse Track, and his wife Alva, a noted supporter of the suffragist movement. Famous journalist Elizabeth Jane Cochrane (better known as Nellie Bly), is also buried here, along with Moby-Dick author Herman Melville. In the mausoleum of the Dunlops, there is a pet parrot entombed in a glass-topped coffin.