Editing Green-Wood Cemetery (section)

=== Founding and construction ===
[[File:Mausoleum at Green-Wood Cemetery (62094h).jpg|thumb|The cemetery's mausoleum]]
Following the founding of [[Mount Auburn Cemetery]] in Massachusetts in 1831, the leaders of [[New York City]] and the then-independent city of [[Brooklyn]] began discussing locations for a cemetery of their own. At the time, over 10,000 people were being buried per year in the two cities.<ref name="Stiles Brockett Proctor 1884">{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924088998046|title=The Civil, Political, Professional and Ecclesiastical History, And Commercial and Industrial Record of the County of Kings and the City of Brooklyn, N.Y. From 1683 to 1884|last1=Stiles|first1=H.R.|last2=Brockett|first2=L.P.|last3=Proctor|first3=L.B.|publisher=Munsell|year=1884|series=New York: county and regional histories and atlases|pages=[https://archive.org/details/cu31924088998046/page/602 602]–607}}</ref> The cemetery was the idea of Henry Evelyn Pierrepont, a Brooklyn social leader.{{sfn|Mosca|2008|p=11}}<ref name="Rider Cooper Hopkins 1916 p. 445" /> As early as 1832, Pierrepont was considering constructing such a cemetery on a hilly area to the east of [[Gowanus Canal|Gowanus Bay]].<ref name="Stiles Brockett Proctor 1884" /><ref name="Rider Cooper Hopkins 1916 p. 445" /> Acts of incorporation for "The Greenwood Cemetery" were passed on April 18, 1838, entitling the corporation to a [[Financial capital|capital]] of $300,000 and the right to {{Convert|200|acre|ha|abbr=}} of land.<ref name="Stiles Brockett Proctor 1884" /><ref name="Green-Wood Cemetery 1839">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=45I3AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA3|title=Exposition of the Plan and Objects of the Green-Wood Cemetery: An Incorporated Trust, Chartered by the Legislature of the State of New York|last=Green-Wood Cemetery (New York, N.Y.)|publisher=Narine & Company|year=1839|page=3}}</ref> [[David Bates Douglass]], Green-Wood's landscape architect, started working on the layout in 1838. He opposed an early suggestion to call the cemetery a [[necropolis]], as he thought the landscaped site should also attract the living.<ref name="Reynolds p. 317" />

On April 11, 1839, a modification to that act was enacted, changing the corporation to a [[nonprofit organization]].<ref name="Green-Wood Cemetery 1839" /> Construction started in May 1839 and the first interment was performed on September 5, 1840.<ref name="Stiles Brockett Proctor 1884" /><ref name="Rider Cooper Hopkins 1916 p. 445" />  At that point, the cemetery commissioners decided to enclose the site with a long [[picket fence]] (later replaced with a metal fence in 1860).{{sfn|Quennell Rothschild & Partners|Paul Cowie & Associates|2007|p=15}} Douglass mostly kept the cemetery's natural landscaping intact, working on the project until he resigned in 1841.{{sfn|Mosca|2008|p=12}} Douglass modeled his two subsequently designed garden cemeteries upon Green-Wood: [[Albany Rural Cemetery]] (1845–1846), located in [[Menands, New York]], and [[Mount Hermon Cemetery]] (1848), in [[Quebec City]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/clementsmss/umich-wcl-M-1390dou?view=text|title=Finding Aid for David Bates Douglass Papers, 1812–1873|last1=Cox|first1=Rob S.|last2=Heslip|first2=Philip|date=July 2017|series=M-1390, M-2294, M-2418, M-2668, M-5038, M-6083|publisher=Manuscripts Division, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan|language=en-US|type=1,191 items|others=David Bates Douglass|orig-year=1812|location=Ann Arbor|access-date=November 2, 2018|quote="Returning to engineering and consulting work, Douglass laid out the Albany Rural Cemetery in 1845–46 and the Protestant cemetery in Quebec in 1848, both in the style of Greenwood Cemetery. In August 1848, he moved to Geneva College (now Hobart)..."|last3=LaPlant|first3=Katie D.}}</ref> Initially some {{Convert|4.5|mi||abbr=}} of roads were paved inside Green-Wood to showcase its natural scenery.{{sfn|Quennell Rothschild & Partners|Paul Cowie & Associates|2007|p=15}} The earliest map dating from 1846 indicates that there were originally three ponds in Green-Wood: Sylvan Water, Green-Isle Water, and Arbor Water, all on the western side of the modern cemetery.<ref name="sylvan-water">{{Cite Hidden Waters NYC|pages=230–231}}</ref>

There were initially very few burials per year; by 1843, there had been 352 burials total, though the number of burials doubled just in the next year. Throughout the 1840s, several churches were allocated plots in Green-Wood Cemetery. These included the
[[Reformed Church in America|Dutch Protestant Reformed]], [[Episcopal Church (United States)|Episcopal]],  [[Presbyterianism|Presbyterian]], [[Unitarian Universalism|Unitarian]], and [[German Lutheran Church|German Lutheran]] churches of Brooklyn. By the 1850s, various fauna were being introduced to the cemetery.{{sfn|Quennell Rothschild & Partners|Paul Cowie & Associates|2007|p=15}}