Alongside Brooklyn’s Fifth Avenue rose a huge Gothic Revival archway I recognized from a stereoview in my collection. Once I started researching the cemetery, I found a large variety of souvenirs pictured it, originally collected on sightseeing tours or as images from imaginary vacations. Famous and Curious Cemeteries reports that there were over 1000 stereoviews of the cemetery by 1862, scarcely 20 years after its founding.

Richard Upjohn, designer of the archway as well as Grand Central Station, did his part to welcome visitors to the graveyard. Pierced like lace, the breathtaking brownstone gate ascended in high arches. It looked too delicate to drive through.

A guard stepped out of a little office. “Can I help you?”

“We just want to look around,” I chirped. “Do you have a map?”

He returned to his office and brought out a large map marked with plot numbers, not names, which made it useless to me.

He saw my camera bag.  “Photographs are forbidden.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely.”

Lush lawns stretched before us, shaded by stately old trees. Summer had come to Brooklyn and the cemetery was magnificent. Thoroughly disappointed, I asked, “Do I need to leave my camera with you?”

“Oh, no.” He stepped back from the car. “Lock it in the trunk.”

My husband pulled over beside the sales office so I could put the camera away. The car ahead of us was labeled, “Location scout.” Obviously photography was no problem, if you paid for the privilege.

We passed the chapel, built in 1915. It stood on land that used to be Arbor Water, one of the famous ponds of Green-Wood. I have a lovely stereoview of Arbor Water, seen over the shoulders of marble angels.

The ground facing the former pond rose in terraces lined with mausoleums. The architecture spanned Egyptian pyramids to columned Greek temples to the Romanesque receiving tomb. I was thrilled to finally see sites I’d adored through my stereopticon.

Green-Wood reportedly has 20 miles of drives, though I’d read they’d torn up the least-used passages to provide more burial space. We were surprised to see new customers buried inside old plots. Raw dirt scarred the green grass.  

Signs along the asphalt roadways urged us to drive slowly. The roads twisted and curved so that I would’ve thought it impossible to get up much speed. Finally we crested a hill and parked. We wandered from monument to monument, blithely crossing the road until a white car nearly ran Mason down. The car looped back and a security guard called us over:  “Can I help you?”

Since he offered, I assumed he could help us locate monuments I’d come to see. I’ve talked to groundskeepers from California to London; they always know the best stories, the prettiest graves. “I’d like to see Charlotte Canda’s tomb,” I said.

The guard snorted. “I don’t know where anyone is buried. You have to ask at the office. Be careful crossing the road.”  

“Why did he ask to help us?”

“He was checking on us. You better leave the camera in the trunk.”

We discovered a memorial I would have liked to document: a marble cameo inside a verdigris frame. “Precious Georgie” was one of the twin sons of an abolitionist preacher from Brooklyn. Engraved on his monument was a poem that made my skin crawl. It began, “He looked up at his mother and whispered, ‘Does Jesus love me?  What will he say when he sees me?’”

Atop the hill, Mason tried to grasp the lay of the land. Green-Wood contains 478 acres. Until the 20th century, it was the largest landscaped cemetery in the world. “Should we head back to the office?” he asked. “They might have a map that’s actually useful and maybe you can buy a photo pass.”

We drove at the same leisurely pace back toward the gate. On the way, we passed a tomb I would have photographed. Two seated angels in magnificent relief flanked the ornate cutwork door of the Stewart mausoleum. The angel on the right held a slender trumpet as tall as his shoulder. They reminded me of the exquisite William Morris tapestries in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. Jonathan Richman’s Green-Wood: New York’s Buried Treasure said the angels had been controversial in their day, since they didn’t depict a gloomy death. The relief had been designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, sculptor of the figure called Grief at Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C.  

The security guard raced round the corner and nearly rear-ended us. We pulled over as much as we could to let him squeeze by.

The cemetery office bustled with people behind a high counter. Eventually a woman deigned to see what we wanted.

“I’m a member of the Association for Gravestone Studies,” I said. “I would like to take photographs.”

“Not for publication,” the woman snapped.

“Is there anyone I can talk to? I’m willing to pay for a photo pass.”

“The superintendent’s in a meeting.”

I’d forgotten how fast New Yorkers talk when they want to get rid of you. “Well, I’ve come from California to see Charlotte Canda’s grave. Could you give us directions?”

She pulled out a poster-sized map and traced our route with a yellow highlighter. “But you can’t photograph it,” she reminded.

In the stereoviews, Charlotte Canda’s grave was a gothic fantasy enclosed by a lacy iron fence. A small chapel with twin spires housed a statue of the virgin, one hand over her bosom. Six granite steps led down to the lawn. A pair of worshipful angels knelt at the edges of the plot.

Charlotte Canda was the only child of a French émigré who’d fought in Napoleon’s army before opening a girls’ school in New York. The prodigy Charlotte designed the ornate memorial for an aunt. After a party to celebrate her 17th birthday, horses pulling her carriage bolted through a raging storm. Flung to the street, Charlotte died in her parents’ arms.

During the 1850s, Canda’s monument was the most visited in the country. Richman reports, “On any given Sunday, a crowd gathered around it.” A 1985 issue of American Cemetery said that Canda’s monument was “still one of the most popular of the cemetery’s numerous attractions.” More than the graves of Samuel Morse (inventor of the telegraph), Elias Howe (inventor of the sewing machine), or Lola Montez (Gold Rush-era dancer of questionable talent who seduced Franz Liszt), I wanted to see Canda’s monument.

Time hadn’t been kind to the soft white marble. It sorely needed cleaning. Fingers had broken from the virgin’s hand. The iron fence evaporated. Rather than a grand plot surrounded by trees, Canda’s memorial looked cramped and forlorn. The disappointment I’d battled since the gatekeeper made me lock up my camera overwhelmed me.

A groundskeeper’s truck rushed past. Trash swirled in its wake. Cautiously, I hurried to retrieve a plastic-swathed photograph of two children. I felt even more melancholy with the discarded picture in my hand.

It just wasn’t fun to look at a graveyard I couldn’t photograph. I’ve visited hundreds of cemeteries, recorded thousands of monuments. Without pictures to bolster my memory, all the cemeteries blur together, nuances of architecture, horticulture, and sculpture lost.

As discouraging as our trip to Green-Wood was, it put all the other cemeteries I’ve visited into perspective. From the caretaker in Florence who opened the English Cemetery to us even though she had a lecture to give across town to the man in Philadelphia who closed the gift counter at Christ Church to give us a private tour of the churchyard, from to the Friends of Highgate Cemetery who fought off utter dissolution to the rangers at Rose Hill Cemetery who repaired headstones fragment by fragment, I’ve found people who love their graveyards and are committed to sharing them. They understand the only way for these relics of history to survive is if their beauty and fascination are transmitted to a curious public.

Green-Wood’s management has the right idea when it hosts tour groups, Memorial Day concerts, and movie nights in its chapel. In addition, though, they need to allow tourists to record what touches them. This refusal to allow photographs negates both the reason the cemetery originally opened to the public and why survivors lavished so much money on its monuments. These works of art were intended to be viewed by as many people as possible. How else would the bereft be certain the world understood their grief? How else could Precious Georgie – who no longer exists in any living memory – survive? Green-Wood, more than any modern memorial park, was designed to be seen by the public. Without an audience, it is merely exorbitant real estate tarted up to go to sleep.

I encourage you to make the pilgrimage yourself. Just be careful crossing the streets.