Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is kicking off Spring with 5 consecutive Saturday walking tours of its historic grounds and famous residents. Reserve your spot on a tour by calling the cemetery office at 914-631-0081, Monday through Friday, 8:30 am to 4:30 pm.

Afternoon tours

Cemetery president Dave Logan leads three daylight tours through the historic lower portion of the cemetery. As you pass the Old Dutch Burying Ground, you will learn how the churchyard and some of its burials inspired Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." You will visit the cemetery’s receiving vault (a hundred-year-old in-ground crypt), Washington Irving, and other highlights of the cemetery’s oldest sections. Afternoon tours cover a distance of about one mile.

Dates: Saturdays, May 3, 17 and 31

Time: Tours start promptly at 2 pm and run to about 4 pm.
Location: Sleepy Hollow Cemetery's south gate, adjacent to the Old Dutch Church, 430 North Broadway, Sleepy Hollow. Parking on site.
Donation: $15 donation/person. Advanced reservations required.
Questions: For questions about May 3, 17, and 24 afternoon tours, email info@sleepyhollowcemetery.org

Evening tours

It's always more fun in the dark! Jim Logan leads two evening lantern tours of the historic heart of the cemetery. After paying respects to Washington Irving, author of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," you will visit the cemetery’s receiving vault, a Revolutionary War general, the cemetery’s Revolutionary War and Civil War monuments, 19th century abortionist Madame Restell, notorious counterfeiter Joshua Miner, the soaring neo-gothic monument of dry goods merchant Owen Jones, artists Jasper Francis Crospey and Robert Havell, blind sculptor Johnson Mundy, industrialists Andrew Carnegie and William Rockefeller, and others. Evening tours cover around two miles. Wear sturdy shoes, as the ground is uneven in places.

Dates: Saturdays, May 10 and 24

Time: 6:30 pm. Tours starts promptly at 7 pm and run to about 9 pm. Location: Sleepy Hollow Cemetery's south gate, adjacent to the Old Dutch Church, 430 North Broadway, Sleepy Hollow. Parking on site.
Donation: $20 donation/person. Advanced reservations required.
Questions: For questions about May 10 and 24 evening tours, email publications@sleepyhollowcemetery.org

The following is a letter from Washington Irving to Gaylord Clark, then editor of Knickerbocker Magazine.
My Dear Clark:

I send you herewith a plan of a rural cemetery projected by some of the worthies of Tarrytown, on the woody hills adjacent to the Sleepy Hollow Church. I have no pecuniary interest in it, yet I hope it may succeed, as it will keep that beautiful and umbrageous neighborhood sacred from the anti-poetical and all-leveling axe. Besides, I trust that I shall one day lay my bones there. The projectors are plain matter-of-fact men, but are already, I believe, aware of the blunder which they have committed in naming it the “Tarrytown,” instead of the “Sleepy Hollow” Cemetery. The latter name would have been enough of itself to secure the patronage of all desirous of sleeping quietly in their graves.

I beg you to correct this oversight, should you, as I trust you will, notice this sepulchral enterprise.

I hope as the spring opens you will accompany me in one of my brief visits to Sunnyside, when we will make another trip to Sleepy Hollow, and (thunder and lightning permitting) have a colloquy among the tombs.

Yours, very truly,
Washington Irving
New York, April 27, 1849