Brooklyn’s sprawling Green-Wood Cemetery, which lists Boss Tweed and Jean-Michel Basquiat as permanent residents, has been named New York’s most underrated landmark by travel company Viator.
The borough’s biggest burial ground welcomes over 400,000 visitors annually through its Gothic arch at the 25th Street and Fifth Avenue entrance in Sunset Park, and is open to the public 365 days a year.
Richard J. Moylan, Green-Wood’s president, told Brooklyn Paper he was “grateful for the growing recognition of this hidden gem in the heart of Brooklyn.”
“Green-Wood strives to be a community resource for New Yorkers and visitors from afar,” said Moylan. “It’s a space where arts and culture thrive, where environmental research finds its home, and where the rich history of New York City finds its voice.”
The cemetery is the final resting place of some 570,000 people across its 478 hilly green acres, including many other late legends such as Leonard Bernstein, Charles Ebbets, Susan McKinney Steward,Lola Montez, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Horace Greeley.
Not just a graveyard, Green-Wood also operates as an outdoor museum, an arboretum, and a repository of history. Details of its extensive programming can be found here.
When completed in June 2025, a new $34 million education and welcome center across from Green-Wood’s main entrance will be used to greet visitors and serve as an indoor educational space.
To find the most “underrated landmark,” travel company Viator said it analyzed the number of reviews each NYC visitor site had on Tripadvisor as well as their rating on the platform, along with the number of hashtags each landmark had on Instagram.
By highlighting which landmarks were the highest reviewed but least hashtagged, it collected a list of the best and under-visited sites in New York City, which welcomes around 60 million tourists every year.
Plymouth Church came in second place with an underrated landmark score of 4.82/5, just behind Green-Wood’s rating of 5/5.
The Brooklyn Heights landmark, established in 1847, offers tourists a poignant journey into the heart of American abolitionist history with exhibitions of 19th-century artifacts including an original copy of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Harriet Beecher Stowe, sister of Plymouth’s influential anti-slavery preacher Henry Ward Beecher.
It is also the site where battalions — the Brooklyn 14th and the Long Island First — were trained in the early 1860s.
“While it may not have garnered widespread attention on social media, this hidden gem defies the conventional tourist radar, making it a top ‘underrated’ destination for a less bustling yet culturally rich experience,” Viator said of Plymouth Church in its ranking. “Whether interested in cultural heritage, American history, or social justice, Plymouth Church is a must-see national landmark on your next visit to New York.”
Ranked third in the listing was King Manor Museum and Park in Queens followed by Manhattan landmarks J. Pierpont Morgan’s Library and St. Bartholomew’s Church and Community House.
