Brooklyn Cemetery Restores Victorian Greenhouse as New Hub

A neglected Victorian greenhouse across from Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery has bloomed back to life as a bright new welcome center for one of New York's most visited historic sites.

The cemetery unveiled the Green-House last week, a restored 1880s glass and copper structure that now serves as a visitor center with exhibitions, research facilities, and event space. When Green-Wood purchased the building in 2012 for $1.6 million, it was vandalized and weathered but still beautiful enough to be called "a retro spaceship of copper and glass that has just touched down from Victorian Gotham."

The restoration honors the building's original purpose. The Weir Greenhouse once sold flowers to mourners visiting the sprawling 478-acre cemetery, which has been a tourist destination since opening in 1838. Today, the new tile floor features a giant map of Green-Wood's grounds, and a flower stand still sells bouquets to visitors.

Green-Wood president Meera Joshi says the center creates an easier entry point for people hesitant about visiting a cemetery. "There is a natural human fear or tendency to avoid matters of death and being in places that remind us of our own mortality," she told reporters. "By adding a new front door, you ease the transition and provide better context."

The attached L-shaped building houses temperature-controlled archives and two galleries with rotating exhibitions. Current displays include handwritten records from Green-Wood's founding, when designer David Bates Douglass rejected calling it a "necropolis" because that sounded like "a mere depository for dead bodies."

Green-Wood was one of America's first "rural cemeteries," a 19th-century movement that believed burial grounds should be pleasant parks rather than dark, cramped churchyards. The cemetery became so popular that one Swedish visitor said it "almost excites a wish to die."

The Ripple Effect

The renovation represents more than historic preservation. With 580,000 permanent residents and scarce burial space costing over $20,000 per plot, Green-Wood is reimagining itself as a community asset for the living.

"At some point you will run out of room to bury people, and you really have to think about what will this green space become," says Lisa West Alpert, the cemetery's senior vice president of development. The Green-House ensures that hundreds of thousands of annual visitors can enjoy this National Historic Landmark's trees, ponds, and valleys for generations to come.

A Victorian greenhouse that once welcomed mourners with flowers now welcomes everyone with hope, history, and a celebration of beautiful green spaces.