Located south of Woodlawn Heights, Bronx, New York City,[1] it has the character of a rural cemetery.

Woodlawn Cemetery opened during the Civil War in 1863,[2] in what was then Yonkers, in an area that was annexed to New York City in 1874.

Built on rolling hills, its tree-lined roads lead to some unique memorials, some designed by famous American architects: McKim, Mead & White, John Russell Pope, James Gamble Rogers, Cass Gilbert, Carrère and Hastings, Sir Edwin Lutyens, Beatrix Jones Farrand, and John La Farge.

[5] As of 2007, plot prices at Woodlawn were reported as $200 per square foot, $4,800 for a gravesite for two, and up to $1.5 million for land to build a family mausoleum.

[10] Numerous notable persons have been interred at Woodlawn Cemetery including: Chief Justice of the United States Charles Evans Hughes; influential New York urban planner and builder Robert Moses; actress Cicely Tyson; Olympic champion swimmer Gertrude Ederle; aviation pioneer Harriet Quimby; performer, playwright and producer George M. Cohan; gangster Bumpy Johnson; authors Nellie Bly, Countee Cullen, Clarence Day, Damon Runyon, E.L. Doctorow, Herman Melville, and Dorothy Parker;[11] musicians Irving Berlin, Miles Davis, Felix Pappalardi, Duke Ellington, W. C. Handy, Fritz Kreisler, Pigmeat Markham, King Oliver, and Max Roach; singers Celia Cruz and Florence Mills; Film director Otto Preminger; husband and wife magicians Alexander Herrmann and Adelaide Herrmann; sportswriter Grantland Rice; gunfighter and US marshal Bat Masterson; developer of the Rolfing body therapy and noted female biochemist Ida Rolf; and, businessmen such as shipping magnate Archibald Gracie, cosmetics manufacturer Richard Hudnut, America's first self-made millionaire woman Madam C. J. Walker, department store founder Rowland Hussey Macy,[12][13] and variety store mogul F. W. Woolworth.