A look at Green-Wood Cemetery’s landmarking candidates

March 9, 2016 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle

The Fort Hamilton Parkway Gatehouse Cottage is one of three Green-Wood Cemetery buildings up for landmarking. Eagle photos by Lore Croghan

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The back entrance is pretty awesome, too.

This is Green-Wood Cemetery’s Fort Hamilton Parkway entrance we’re talking about.

Possibly you’ve never seen the lovely brownstone Victorian Eclectic-style Gatehouse and Gatehouse Cottage at this cemetery entrance even if you’ve visited the famous graveyard many times.

So we’ve taken photos of the two buildings — which are now on the city Landmarks Preservation Commission’s calendar for designation consideration following a Feb. 23 LPC meeting.

We’ve also snapped fresh shots of Green-Wood Chapel, a century-old Gothic-style design by Warren & Wetmore. It is the third building that’s now a candidate for city landmarking following the LPC’s decision to remove the cemetery as a whole from the landmarking calendar.

The Fort Hamilton Parkway entrance is a half-hour walk from the better-known main entrance on Fifth Avenue in Greenwood Heights — not including time to stop and photograph extraordinary spots like Battle Hill and its statue of Minerva, who raises her hand to salute the Statue of Liberty in the distance.

The Fifth Avenue entrance’s High Victorian-style arches are landmarked. Monk parakeets nest in their Gothic spires. Photographers flock to them along with the birds. Of course visitors gravitate to this entrance first.

Nevertheless, the recently renovated Fort Hamilton Parkway Gatehouse and Gatehouse Cottage, designed by Richard Mitchell Upjohn, are charming.

Green-Wood officials opposed the landmarking of the full 478-acre cemetery, which was founded in 1838. It had been on the LPC calendar since 1981.

But they will support the landmarking of the chapel and the Fort Hamilton Parkway entrance buildings, the Brooklyn Eagle has learned.

“These were the structures that Green-Wood and LPC staff mutually agreed upon,” Richard Moylan, Green-Wood’s president, told the Eagle via email.

A Green-Wood vice president who lived in the Gatehouse recently retired and moved out. Green-Wood hasn’t decided what to do with it but is reviewing various options, “including turning it into a horticulture center or for use as an artist-in-residence program,” Moylan said.

There are public restrooms in the Cottage, and storage space that might be included in the Gatehouse development or used as a “small exhibition space,” he added.