Despite being a dyed-in-wool New Yorker who remembers the 15 cent fare, I've never been to Green-Wood. In 2012 a first cousin of mine, about my age, passed away and was buried there. Despite the closeness as a relation, and having met one of his daughters, the family tradition of not informing family members of a relative's demise prevailed again. Again, no need to go into that here, only to say that I heard of his passing, from his daughter, two months after his internment at Green-Wood in August 2012. They were the Brooklyn end of the family, and I was impressed, and pleased, they thought enough to use Green-Wood. But this is more about the hyphenated name, and not my family's burial habits.
I've always wondered, what's up with that hyphen? Was the place once the Green cemetery, merged with the Wood cemetery, and Green came out on top? More acres?
There's the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. A famous hyphenated name, and a resting place in its own right, but that was a merger of the Waldorf and the Astoria hotels that were side-by-side on 34th Street, where the Empire State building is now. When they were torn down, the hotels merged into the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, taking up significant space in Midtown on Park Avenue. They remain a name synonymous with a luxury hotel.
Green-Wood cemetery was established in 1838, on 478 very rural acres in what then known formally as Kings County, but now it's just Brooklyn, Dutch for "broken land," but that's another story as well.
When Green-Wood was established it was treated as a park. Picnics were held there, and people walked through there as if it were Central Park. Some of this has remained, but picnics are no longer permitted, but there are tours because of the famous people buried there, and the interest in the 19th century buildings and sculptures. And no doubt, 478 acres of contiguous green space in a city more famous for being paved.
The other day, Mr. Clyde Haberman of the NYT, (who also remembers the 15 cent fare) wrote one of his bi-monthly 'Breaking Bread' pieces where he interviews someone with a deep-vein connection to New York. His subject was Richard J. Moylan, 58, president of Green-Wood Cemetery. It's like a museum. It has a president.
Mr. Moylan worked at Green-Wood part-time in his youth as a landscaper (not a grave digger). His father worked there installing monuments. You could almost say Mr. Moylan is chip off the old block, but we won't.
Mr. Haberman spins another good tale about Green-Wood and why it doesn't hold the freshly deceased Mayor Koch. And as usual, since this is a 'Breaking Bread' piece, we learn a little of the meal.
A picnic on the grounds was out, because that's not allowed these days. It's still an active cemetery, and there are burials constantly going on. Thus, take-out pizza, with a half extra-topping of cheese was enjoyed inside with Mr. Moylan. Mr. Haberman seems to let us know what his expense report is going to claim.
Whenever I see a story on Green-Wood I hope for a clue as to why it's Green-Wood, and not GreenWood, or Green Wood, or Greenwood cemetery. No mention in Mr. Haberman's piece, but he did answer his e-mail when the question was put to him.
Certainty was not claimed, but Mr. Haberman believes it's a vestigial form of writing two nouns that are adjectives, that was common in the 19th century, that pretty much faded away in the 20th century, and completely disappeared in the current one.
Mr. Haberman points out The New-York Historical Society is still written with a hyphen. He further explains that his own New York Times was once printed as the New-York Times. Which Times? The New-York Times; which cemetery? The Green-Wood cemetery.
This is such a scholarly and cogent explanation that I have to believe it's true. Two words that are considered adjectives are hyphenated. There used to be a grammatical rule.
Hyphens have been disappearing, but not altogether. Picking up today's NYT, first story, first column, I spotted 'anticorruption' written as one word. These kinds of prefix words seem to have undergone a rule change, because it is words of that kind that I can reliably expect to be smashed together.
In 2001 the trend toward removing hyphenation became so pronounced to me that I wrote to Mr. Russell Baker, the retired NYT columnist, who over the years has answered some mail. Not e-mail.
He memorably wrote back that he surrendered to "hyphen idiocy years before leaving the Times." He expressed particular disdain for two names made into one, like "PBS's NewsHour." (There is actually a name for this type of word, but I don't remember it.)
I remember as a kid that 'good-bye' was always hyphenated. It appears that way in the dictionary, if not in current use.
It seems however Green-Wood's hyphen is as permanent as death itself.
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