Field Trips
Our educators will lead your class through an inquiry-based program at Green-Wood on foot or using our historic trolley. Most walking programs are 90 minutes, with the exceptions of our Seasonal Nature Walk and March to Battle Hill programs, which are 75 minutes. All trolley programs are 2 hours. Every program takes students to several fascinating, thematically-related sites within the Cemetery where they will engage in hands-on learning that supports classroom curricula. Green-Wood programs include discussion, inquiry-based exploration, and a hands-on component. Depending on the subject, field trips include primary source analysis, writing, drawing, and/or gathering scientific data, depending on the program theme. All programs are tailored to specific grade levels, and support a variety of local, state, and national standards.
Trolley programs and our Seasonal Nature Walk take place year-round. All other walking programs are offered in Fall, Spring, and Summer.
For more, please see the Program Topics section below or download our 2019-2020 School Programs brochure!
CLASSROOM PRE- AND POST-VISIT LESSONS
Bring one of Green-Wood’s educators to your classroom for a pre- or post-visit lesson to accompany your field trip to the Cemetery! Our educators will bring all the materials for each 50-minute lesson and will engage your students in essential learning to prepare for their visit or contextualize it afterward.
Pre-lessons include a visual presentation of the Cemetery and its history, and hands-on exploration of primary source materials to support the field trip experience. Booking a pre-lesson will best prepare your class to maximize their time on site during their School Program.
Post-lessons engage students in a hands-on project that allows them to “teach back” and creatively express their takeaways from visiting the Cemetery. Post-lessons ensure the learning continues beyond our gates.
You will have the option to book a pre-visit and/or post-visit when you reserve a field trip.
School Partnership
Green-Wood is proud to offer a limited number of free programs to Title 1 schools that can commit to bringing at least one 4th, 7th, or 11th grade class to Green-Wood for multiple programs, and to bringing our educators to their classrooms for pre- and post-field trip lessons. If you are interested in learning more about being a partner school, please email Rachel Walman at rwalman@green-wood.com or call 718-210-3060.
Program Topics (click to expand)
American History
The American Revolution – Trolley Program (Grades: 2-12)
How did New Yorkers help create the United States of America? Students will visit the site of part of the Battle of Brooklyn, including the statue Minerva and the Altar to Liberty, and then travel around the Cemetery assessing the roles of other revolutionaries in this era through source inquiry and monument study.
The American Revolution: March to Battle Hill! (Grades: 2-12)
How should the Battle of Brooklyn, a loss for the Continental Army, be remembered? March from Green-Wood’s Main Entrance to the top of Battle Hill: the highest natural point in Brooklyn and the site of part of the 1776 battle. Learn about it through maps, documents, and images on the way up the hill. When you reach the top, study the monument Minerva and the Altar to Liberty.
Expand the section below to learn about American revolutionaries buried at Green-Wood. See this page for our full list of Focus Figures.
Focus Figures: American Revolution
- John Greenwood: patriot fifeboy in the Continental Army and George Washington’s favorite dentist
- William Livingston: member of the Second Continental Congress and early governor of New Jersey, buried with his son Brockholst, an early Supreme Court judge
- Margaret Pine: once thought to be the last enslaved person in New York State, born in 1776
- Ebenezer Stevens: patriot, soldier, and participant in the Boston Tea Party
- Robert Troup: college roommate of Alexander Hamilton and Continental Army general captured during the Battle of Brooklyn
The Civil War: Homefront, Battlefields, Burial Ground – Walking or Trolley Program (Grades: 4-12)
How did diverse New Yorkers and Brooklynites experience, respond to, and contribute to the Civil War?
Starting at our Freedom Lots, visit the graves of important participants in Civil War history, all with unique perspectives: white and Black soldiers, a nurse, a drummer boy (trolley only), and more. See a different war through their eyes.
Expand the section below to learn about the men, women, and children who experienced the Civil War and are interred at Green-Wood. See this page for our full list of Focus Figures.
Focus Figures: Civil War
- Civil War Soldiers’ Monument: an 1869 memorial to the 149,000 Union soldiers from New York City
- John Cooke: executed for his role in John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry
- Anna Leah Fox: one of the infamous Fox sisters, who inspired the Spiritualist movement that both comforted and confounded bereft family members of fallen soldiers in the Civil War era and beyond
- The Freedom Lots: the largest undisturbed burial ground for people of African descent in NYC, located within Green-Wood, including survivors of the New York City Draft Riots and Black Civil War veterans
- Abigail Hopper Gibbons: noted abolitionist, Underground Railroad station master and Civil War nurse
- Henry B. Hidden: white Civil War soldier with an elaborate monument and a gallant battle history
- Eastman Johnson: Civil War era genre painter whose canvases tell stories of daily life in those turbulent times
- Laura Keene: star of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater, present the night of Lincoln’s assassination
- Thomas Francis Meagher: Irish patriot, inventor of the tricolor Irish flag, and famed American Civil War general in the 69th “Irish Brigade” Regiment. Though not interred here, his cenotaph is here.
- The Little Drummer Boy, Clarence MacKenzie: Brooklyn’s first casualty of the war, who died in training from friendly fire at age twelve
- The Soldiers’ Lot: land Green-Wood donated for free burials of New York State soldiers who died during the Civil War, full of Union veterans’ graves
- Ann Priscilla Vanderpoel: the “Florence Nightingale” of New York, founder of the Ladies Home U.S. General Hospital, formerly on East 51st Street in Manhattan
Immigrants in NYC: Eighteenth Century to Today- Walking or Trolley Program (Grades: 2-12)
How have immigrants changed New York, and vice versa?
Explore little-known stories of New York immigrant communities such as Little Syria; discover the struggles, successes, and stereotypes of Italian, German, and Irish Americans; and investigate New York’s immigrant cultures today through unique sections of burials (walking version covers Nineteenth to Twenty-First centuries).
Expand the section below to learn about Green-Wood’s permanent residents with fascinating and inspiring immigration stories. See this page for our full list of Focus Figures.
Focus Figures: Immigration
- Chow Ye Tong lot: graves of people associated with a Chinese-American organization active during the period of Chinese exclusion
- William F. Mangels: German-American engineering maverick who created many of Coney Island’s wildest rides
- Thomas Francis Meagher: Irish patriot, inventor of the tricolor Irish flag, and famed American Civil War general in the 69th “Irish Brigade” Regiment. Though not interred here, his cenotaph is here.
- The Sahadi family: Lebanese (formerly referred to as Upper Syrian) immigrants of Manhattan’s “Little Syria” in the 1890s who later created a food empire on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn
- Johnny Torrio: mentor to Al Capone, whose story sheds light on Italian-American community and stereotyping in the twentieth century
- Contemporary lots: an area of the Cemetery with contemporary graves. illustrating who makes Brooklyn and New York City what they are today
Innovators & Inventors from Industrialization to the Progressive Era – Walking or Trolley Program (Grades: 4-12)
How did individuals impact American politics, technology, and culture in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries?
Students will explore the stories of influential, visionary, and even corrupt changemakers buried at Green-Wood to determine how they forged a new American society—and who thrived, survived, or suffered in it.
Expand the section below to learn about a notable changemakers buried at Green-Wood. See this page for our full list of Focus Figures.
Focus Figures: Innovators and Inventors
- Henry Chadwick: known as the “Father of Baseball,” originated modern baseball terminology
- Peter Cooper: pioneering philanthropist, educator, and inventor of steam locomotives
- Thomas C. Durant: Transcontinental Railroad tycoon who drove the Golden Spike at Promontory Summit, Utah
- Charles Feltman: Coney Island restauranteur and inventor of the hot dog
- Jeremiah Hamilton: first Black millionaire to make his fortune on Wall Street; a controversial figure among both white and Black people of his era, nicknamed the “Prince of Darkness”
- Elias Howe Jr.: inventor of the modern sewing machine
- Louisine Havemeyer: suffragist and heiress to the Domino Sugar fortune
- Mary Jacobi: pioneering pediatrician and suffragist
- Clemence Lozier: physician, suffragist, and trailblazer in the training of women doctors
- George McNulty: engineer who helped build the Brooklyn Bridge
- Samuel F.B. Morse: pioneer in telegraphy, artist, and inventor of Morse code
- Isabella Seaholm née Goodwin: first woman to be appointed a detective in New York City
- Elmer Sperry: co-inventor of the gyroscope, known as the “father of modern navigation technology”
- Louis Comfort Tiffany: artist and designer who revolutionized stained glass art
- William Magear “Boss” Tweed: corrupt Tammany Hall boss who ruled New York City politics for years
- John Underwood: pioneering Typewriter manufacturer
Gone, Not Forgotten: Black New Yorkers Who Changed America – Walking or Trolley Program (Grades: 2-12)
How should we honor Black New Yorkers from the past three centuries who shaped America then and now?
While visiting gravesites, students will learn about and think of ways to educate others on the legacies of luminaries like James Weldon Johnson; unsung leaders like abolitionist Elizabeth Gloucester; and the nearly forgotten, like the over 1300 people interred in the Freedom Lots.
Expand the section below to learn about pioneering Black New Yorkers buried at Green-Wood. See this page for our full list of Focus Figures.
Focus Figures: Black New Yorkers
- Jean-Michel Basquiat: musician, poet and groundbreaking Neo-Expressionist and graffiti artist of the late twentieth century
- Samuel Cornish: pioneering abolitionist and journalist, co-publisher of the first Black newspaper in the U.S.
- Elizabeth Gloucester: Abolitionist and real estate tycoon who left an estate valued over one million dollars to her children after her death
- Margaret and Scipio Franks: self-emancipated people who worked in Manhattan for noted white abolitionists, the Gibbons family
- Jeremiah Hamilton: first Black millionaire to make his fortune on Wall Street; a controversial figure among both white and Black people of his era, nicknamed the “Prince of Darkness”
- James Weldon Johnson: NAACP officer, diplomat, poet, and lyricist of the Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing, known as the “Black National Anthem”
- Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Steward: first Black, female doctor in New York State, third in the country; abolitionist, activist, and community leader
- Margaret Pine: once thought to be the last enslaved person in New York State, born in 1776
- Thomas Joiner-White: the third-known Black American to earn a medical degree in the United States
Art and Art History
Art and Architecture Highlights with Sketching-Walking or Trolley Program (Grades: 4-12)
How is a cemetery a unique artistic environment?
Through close examination, sketching, and discussion, students will: analyze the symbols, materials, and architecture prevalent at Green-Wood; connect the natural landscape to artistic movements in the nineteenth century; and explore contemporary art on our grounds. Students leave with a full sketchbook—their own cemetery art guide.
In addition to discussing the symbols, inscriptions, and design features on many different types of monuments, students may explore art and architecture in a variety of other ways. Expand each section below to learn about art and architecture at Green-Wood. See this page for our full list of Focus Figures.
Focus Figures: Contemporary Art
- Here Lie the Secrets of the Visitors of Green-Wood Cemetery by Sophie Calle, 2017
- The Greeter by John Coleman: A contemporary tribute to painter of the American West, George Catlin, depicting Hidatsa Chief Black Moccasin, designed based off Catlin’s own drawings, installed in 2012
- L’Ours (The Bear) by Dan Ostermiller: A bronze memorial to artist William Holbrook Beard, known for his paintings of anthropomorphized animals, installed at Green-Wood in 2002
Focus Figures: Significant Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Sculpture and Architecture
- The Stewart Mausoleum: Bronze bas-relief angels by Augustus-Saint Gaudens planking the door to the mausoleum designed by architect Stanford White
- The DeWitt Clinton Monument by Henry Kirke Brown: Monumental bronze inspired by Classical sculpture memorializing DeWitt Clinton; New York City mayor, New York State governor, and the man behind the Erie Canal
- Precious Georgie by Charles Calverley: Marble bas-relief of four year-old Georgie, son of Brooklyn preacher Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
- Azrael, The Angel of Death by Solon Borglum: Striking sculpture of a bowing robed figure marking the grave of Brooklyn Mayor Charles Schieren
- The Arch by Richard Upjohn & Son: Gothic Revival archway marking the Cemetery’s Main Entrance, featuring three ornate spires, two passages, and four tympanums with sculpture by John Moffitt
- The Historic Chapel by Warren & Wetmore: Constructed on the site of one of Green-Wood’s glacial ponds, Arbor Water, the Historic Chapel was completed in 1912 to accommodate memorial services
- The Four Ages by John Moffitt: Relief sculptures adorning the Fort Hamilton Gatehouse depicting four stages of life: infancy, youth, adulthood, and old age
- Minerva and the Altar to Liberty: A monument erected in 1920 to the soldiers who died on that spot during the Battle of Brooklyn, August 2, 1776
Focus Figures: Artists and Architects Interred at Green-Wood
- Jean-Michel Basquiat: musician, poet and groundbreaking Neo-Expressionist and graffiti artist of the late twentieth century
- George Bellows: Twentieth-century Realist painter
- William Merritt Chase: American Impressionist painter
- Vestie Edward Davis: Mid-twentieth-century folk artist who specialized in portraying Coney Island
- Asher Durand: Hudson River School Painter, one of the founders of National Academy of Design
- Nathaniel Currier and James Ives: famous publishers of nineteenth-century, picturesque Americana prints
- Eastman Johnson: Civil War era genre painter whose canvases tell stories of daily life in those turbulent times
- Emma Stebbins: Designer of Bethesda Fountain in Central Park
- James Renwick Jr.: Architect of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Smithsonian Institution Building
- Jacob Wrey Mould: Architect of Belvedere Castle in Central Park
- Louis Comfort Tiffany: artist and designer who revolutionized stained glass art
ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
Seasons at Green-Wood! Nature Scavenger Hunt-Walking Program (Grades: Pre-K through 2)
Students will engage in an interactive storytime and then take a walk on our grounds to witness, identify, and record the natural phenomena of the season.
Program Rates
| Title 1 | Public/Parochial | Private/non-NYC | |
| Walking Program (90 minutes) | 175 | 225 | 300 |
| Pre/Post Classroom Visit (50 minutes) | 125 | 150 | 175 |
| Trolley Program (120 minutes) | 250 | 325 | 400 |
| Seasonal Nature Walk/March to Battle Hill (75 minutes) | 150 | 200 | 250 |
Registration
Our registration process has changed. To register for any program, click “book now.” Programs may be booked and paid for online by credit card two weeks or more in advance. If you wish to pay by check or purchase order please call 718-210-3060 to book your program. All payments are due two weeks prior to your program.
OTHER PROGRAM INFORMATION
Group Size
Programs can accommodate up to thirty-five people. For Pre-K and K groups, there must be one chaperone for every ten students. For grades 1-12, there must be one chaperone for every fifteen students. For in-school programs, you must book one program for each class.
Special Needs
Please tell us any relevant information that will help us make your program a success. Please note that though our trolley is wheelchair accessible, none of Green-Wood’s programs are completely ADA compliant.
Lunch
Please note that Green-Wood does not provide storage for belongings, including lunch, other than on the trolley. If you wish to have your class eat lunch at Green-Wood, please state this in the notes when you book your program, and our staff will contact you to confirm. School groups eating lunch at Green-Wood must respect our space and keep it clean. Green-Wood educators are not able to remain with groups while they eat. All food and drinks except water must be sealed and put away during programs.
EDUCATION STAFF AND CONTACTS
Rachel Walman
Director of Education
718-210-3060
rwalman@green-wood.com
Minna Nizam
School Programs Educator
718-210-3058
mnizam@green-wood.com
For the fastest reply, please email education@green-wood.com
RESCHEDULE AND CANCELLATION POLICY
Green-Wood School Programs take place completely outdoors (except while students are on the trolley), rain or shine. Programs will be cancelled and rescheduled only due to severe weather. If Green-Wood cancels your program, we will either reschedule it or refund you in full.
If for any reason you wish to reschedule your program for no additional fee, please email us two weeks before your program date. Green-Wood will make every effort to reschedule your program if requested, though reschedule dates are subject to availability.
If you wish to cancel your program and receive a full refund, please email us at least three weeks before your program. Cancellations will be 50% refunded if made between 20 days and 48 hours prior to the program date/start time.
In order to avoid errors, cancellations and reschedules requests MUST be made via email. Green-Wood does not accept cancellations or reschedules made by telephone, phone message, or word-of-mouth by Green-Wood educators.
If Offices of Pupil Transportation cancel buses for field trips, your principal cancels field trips, or schools close on the date of your program: you have one week to email and reschedule the program at no additional fee. If no reschedule date works for you, we will refund you in full.
Program fees will NOT be refunded if:
- A cancellation is requested fewer than 48 hours prior to the program date/start time. OR
- You fail to arrive on the date of your program. OR
- You receive a shortened program due to late arrival or arrival at the wrong place in the Cemetery. OR
- You arrive for your program during a different time slot than you reserved and we are unable to accommodate you. We will make every effort to accommodate you, but cannot guarantee it.
Getting Here
Please note that Green-Wood’s School Programs now have several different starting locations. Please see this page for public transportation and driving directions for each of our programs.