Now adding to their board
The Woodlawn Cemetery
NOTE: all Woodlawn board members receive a $25,000/year stipend for their service.
Established in 1863, New York City’s Woodlawn Cemetery is internationally known as the resting place of a host of history’s greats including Duke Ellington, Admiral David Farragut, Fiorello LaGuardia, and Herman Melville.
A National Historic Landmark, the highest recognition accorded to the nation’s most historically significant properties, Woodlawn is one of the country’s finest examples of a nineteenth-century garden cemetery. It is home to the largest and most distinguished collection of historic mausoleums in the United States, and it remains an active property. The cemetery’s designation recognizes its outstanding landscape design and collection of art and architecture. It also acknowledges Woodlawn’s significant role in memorializing and celebrating prominent Americans who shaped the nation’s history and culture.
Since Woodlawn’s founding in 1863, 310,000 people, from Gilded Age magnates to pioneers for women’s rights to Harlem Renaissance writers and musicians, as well as artists, athletes, and ordinary citizens, have been interred on the cemetery’s 400 acres. Woodlawn provides a spectacular setting to honor the three hundred thousand individuals memorialized on its grounds. Its monuments represent some of the finest examples of memorial architecture and art in the nation, including over thirteen hundred private mausoleums. Non-sectarian and multicultural from its inception, those interred here include giants in the fields of business and industry, civic life, the arts, entertainment, and more.
Today, the cemetery and crematory continue to support a diverse community, meeting the needs of over three thousand families each year. Woodlawn’s staff is actively committed to serving those who come to the cemetery on a daily basis to attend services, remember loved ones, research their ancestors, or participate in their special events and educational programs.
Board meets four times a year, half the time at the Cemetery, half the time midtown. All board members must sit on 3-4 committees. Trustees spend on average a minimum of 2 hours a week in service to Woodlawn. As a result, Board members are compensated $25,000 for their board service. Current board includes a retired Citi banker, a retired Milbank Tweet partner, several consultants and partners from Cravath and Sidley Austin, among others.