Woodlawn, a non-sectarian cemetery, was founded in 1863 by some of New York City's most prominent citizens. Their success in creating a rural aesthetic venue that rivals Europe's great cemeteries paved the way for Woodlawn's designation as a National Historic Landmark, the highest recognition accorded to the country's historically significant properties. In this way, as well as culturally, architecturally, and environmentally, Woodlawn is a national treasure.

The cemetery tells the story of New York City and the nation from the industrial age through the twentieth century to today. Every industry, class, religion, and ethnicity is represented by the veritable "Who's Who of American History" enshrined here, reflecting stories of art and engineering, immigration, industrialization, and cultural and societal development. Woodlawn is the final resting place of diverse individuals and their families, from artists and writers to business and civic leaders, entertainers and financiers to inventors to merchants, as well as musicians, scientists, and sports figures. Many are nationally significant figures or persons closely associated with the history of New York and the surrounding area.

Selected by its founders for easy accessibility from the New York-Harlem Railroad Line, Woodlawn comprises a 400-acre active site with over 300,000 individual interments in approximately 47,000 family lots, 48,000 single grave spaces, and ten community mausoleums. The cemetery contains 45 hillside tombs as well as more than 1300 freestanding private family mausoleums. The designs of these, which represent the largest architecturally significant collection of such structures in the nation, often reflect deeply personal and long-standing relationships between architect and client. 

Woodlawn’s sizable assemblage of mausoleums and memorials in tandem with the extensive archival documentation of the designers and artists who created them comprise one of the largest such bodies of work in the United States. Meticulously preserved by the cemetery from its inception, these records were donated to Columbia University’s Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library in 2006.