9 Best Sights in New York, USA

In 1928 Darwin Martin commissioned a family mausoleum—a project he dropped after his fortunes were pummeled by the following year's stock-market crash. In 2004, Buffalo's Forest Lawn cemetery (near Delavan Avenue) built the concrete-and-granite Blue Sky Mausoleum from plans owned by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

Some of Auburn's most famous residents are buried at Fort Hill, an outstanding example of the parklike burial grounds resulting from the rural-cemetery movement of the early 1800s. Rising over a middle-class residential and commercial neighborhood near downtown, Fort Hill is a great place for a quiet walk under giant trees and for views of the city. Among those buried here are William H. Seward, who served in the cabinets of two U.S. presidents; Harriet Tubman, who liberated hundreds of slaves; and Captain Myles Keogh, who fought (and died) alongside General George Custer at Little Big Horn.

Formed by a glacier that left undulating terrain upon its retreat, the 196 rolling acres of this cemetery are as much a park as they are the final resting place for more than 370,000 people. Among the more famous laid to rest here are suffragist Susan B. Anthony and anti-slavery leader Frederick Douglass. The cemetery, dedicated in 1838, is one of the nation's oldest. Many headstones retain Victorian symbols such as the anchor, crown, obelisk, or sheaf of wheat. The city owns the cemetery, but a caretakers group called the Friends of Mount Hope Cemetery offers tours.

The graves of many of Nyack's artists and writers, including Edward Hopper, Carson McCullers, and Helen Hayes, are in this cemetery.

Surrounding the Old Dutch Church is the famous Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. It was featured in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow as the site of the Headless Horseman's hauntings; some of the book's characters come from names on the gravestones. The cemetery is open daily 8:30–4:30.

Mark Twain rests in the Langdon family plot, with his daughter Clara and son-in-law, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, at his feet. A 12-foot-tall monument marks the spot (12 feet, in river terminology, is 2 fathoms, or "mark twain," the derivation of Clemens' pen name).

Dead artists of all kinds reside here: poets, musicians, writers, painters, sculptors, dancers, and bon vivants. Many of the stones, in keeping with the wishes of their buried subjects, tell artfully rendered stories. Look for the grassy knoll behind the Evergreen Cemetery to commune with the spirits of Woodstock.