History, celebrity, leafy beauty live on at NYC cemetery

NEW YORK (AP) — Woodlawn Cemetery in New York City is the resting place of scores of famous and influential people. One recent trolley tour of jazz and vaudeville greats included the gravesites of Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington, George M. Cohan and more. Other walking and trolley tours cover themes such as Black, Irish, Italian and women’s history. The 400-acre non-denominational cemetery is also an arboretum full of grand old trees. There are castle-like mausoleums with Tiffany windows and statuary, and also simple, flat headstones. The cemetery is one of the Bronx’s beautiful green spaces, lesser known perhaps than the nearby Bronx Zoo and New York Botanical Garden.