Green-Wood Cemetery Tour Captivates and Enlightens

Brooklyn College group enthralled by National Historic Landmark

Battle Hill - Brooklyn's highest point and where American Revolutionary War soldiers set up a sniper base.

To the Brooklyn College delegation gathered in Green-Wood Cemetery on Friday, November 6, the glorious view of Brooklyn stretching down to the harbor dimmed in comparison to the lives revealed by the surrounding graves. The tour of the historic grounds was organized by the Brooklyn College Task Force on City-Based and Sustainability Education to highlight community-engaged learning, which uses local sites and resources to amplify students' learning.

Over 60 faculty, administrators, students, alumni and community partners joined Green-Wood Cemetery Historian Jeffrey Richman on a trolley ride through the cemetery grounds.  Richman narrated the tour with stories about the Battle of Brooklyn—fought and commemorated on Battle Hill; about the heralded—Leonard Bernstein, Horace Greeley, Tammeny Hall Boss and William Tweed; and about the forgotten—the 103 unidentified victims of the 1876 Brooklyn Theater fire.

Several of Associate Professor of History Jocelyn Wills' students shared how they sharpened their research and analytical skills as they combed through public records to reconstruct the lives of everyday people, whose names they gathered from gravestones earlier in the semester. The tour ended with a luncheon—inside the stained-glass, bejeweled Green-Wood Chapel—celebrating the Task Force's work in support of innovative initiatives in sustainability and using the borough as a classroom.

Look for a more in-depth story on city-based learning appearing in the fall issue of the Brooklyn College Magazine, coming next month...