From the NY Times:

After the wealthy stockbroker John H. Harbeck died at the Plaza Hotel after a short illness in 1910, his wife, Kate, set about to build the most expensive and impressive mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery. The architect Thomas E. Blake designed a 90-foot-tall marble octagon with a steeple, heavy bronze doors, Tiffany windows and a pipe organ. The mausoleum was built by Guastavino in 1918. Kate was buried in the mausoleum in 1930 after dying in freakish revolving door accident on New Year's Eve at the Plaza Hotel.

A few other miscellaneous items:

• John and Kate were apparently doting pet owners who were ridiculed by their neighbors in Boulder, Colorado (where they had a summer home) for "holding expensive and elaborate funerals" for their dogs.

• After meeting Kate, John went through some messy divorce proceedings with his wife, Caroline, that centered around determining whether Caroline was, in fact, his wife, legally speaking. The NY Times covered the trial pretty heavily, but also evinced some disdain for those captivated by the scandalous affair: "A great number of persons with nothing else to do crowded the court-room . . . yesterday morning, and many more stood in a line for hours waiting for an opportunity to enter".

• In researching the Harbecks, I stumbled upon yet another example of how much better journalism was a hundred years ago. From a 1906 report in the NY Times: "LOST — A CEMENT BARREL. It Had a High Old Time Before It Invaded the Subway". The piece goes on to offer the reader some sage, hard-earned words of wisdom: "an old barrel that is out for a good time and does not care a hoop, any way, is a difficult thing to tackle in a stiff breeze."

• While we're on the subject, you should also read this great NY Times article from 1882 that I discovered a few weeks ago:

Some Italian lunatic residing in Turin has for months past been indulging in the monomania of writing and sending enormous quantities of letters to persons residing in this City . . . The recipients, regarding the matter as an oversight on the part of some foreign or traveling friend, pay the postage and open the letters only to find them filled with balderdash and senseless twaddle in Italian, with a faulty English translation appended, the nonsense being usually addressed "to the noble and illustrious reader," and the writer subscribing himself as "The Emperor of the World, Monarch of the Universe," &c.

The mausoleum of Herman O. Armour, co-founder of Armour & Company, the meatpacking giant

Guarding the tomb of George Ehret, the "King of Beer Corners"

This is one of a pair hanging around the entrance to the mausoleum of Frank Woolworth and his family (including his troubled granddaughter and heiress Barbara Hutton, the "poor little rich girl"). Mr. Woolworth, founder of the five-and-dime empire that bore his name, is one of several members of what Woodlawn calls its "Merchant Prince Hall of Fame"; James C. Penney and Rowland H. Macy, among others, can also be found resting peacefully here in the cemetery, Mr. Penney in a used (or "previously owned") mausoleum that he bought from William Randolph Hearst's widow.

Somewhere in the vicinity, I believe, is the pink granite mausoleum of Elvira and Lawrence Wegielski, which for quite a while was the modern-day version of the Evergreens Cemetery's Reed mausoleum. Mr. Wegielski, who passed away in 2010, would make regular visits to Woodlawn

every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, both to care for the site and to spend time with the spirit of his dead wife.

''A lot of people say, why do you have to go down to the cemetery three times a week?'' he said. ''This seems to relieve me. I come down, I don't bother anybody, I sit down, I bring soda with me, oranges, whatever. I have lunch with her.''

When the season calls for it, he decorates. Last Christmas, in addition to two ornamented trees, he installed a talking wreath on the door of the mausoleum, so that passers-by who triggered a motion detector were greeted with a hearty ''Merry Christmas.'' One security guard, on night patrol on the pitch-black grounds, was so startled he pulled out his gun. Daytime visitors were alternately spooked and delighted.

There's a beautiful twist at the end of the NY Times's 2003 account of their relationship, from which I've quoted above. Take a read!

That's the name of this Sally Farnham sculpture marking the graves of Vernon and Irene Castle, a famous ballroom dancing duo who starred in 1914's Watch Your Step, the first Broadway show written by Irving Berlin, a fellow Woodlawner. The Castles' time together was cut short, however, when Vernon, a captain in the British Army's Royal Flying Corps, died in a plane crash while training an American cadet in Texas during World War I.

and their butterfly companions

When I spotted this mausoleum, there was a worker inside cleaning it. I didn't want to take him by surprise, so I said hi and told him I was going to snap a photo.

Him: No, you can't do that.
Me: I can't?
Him: I don't think you can take a picture of an open one without permission.
Me: Oh, that's OK. I'll just get the top part here.
Him: [Stepping outside and looking up] Ah, you want a picture of the Schmuck, huh?
Me: Well, let's not cast aspersions on the character of the dead [is what I wish I had said].

Here lies Robert Moses, one of the most controversial characters in the history of New York. This might seem like a surprisingly modest resting place for a man of such power and influence, but who needs a silly little mausoleum when you've built yourself a monument out of the entire city?

I believe this is the building whose construction prompted Leona Helmsley to sue Woodlawn and move her husband's remains up to a new $1.4-million mausoleum in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

Mama Schaaf.

The Fordham Flash, once again

Railroad tycoon, developer of Manhattan Beach, and president of the American Society for the Suppression of the Jews — wait, strike that last one.

The "fabled robber baron", entombed inside a mausoleum modeled after the Maison Carrée

This was originally the Methodist Episcopal Church of Woodlawn Heights. Take a look at the battlements on top of the building; are those chutes for pouring boiling liquids on the heads of invading Presbyterians?

Each manhole cover commemorates one of the 23 workers, almost all of them sandhogs, who have died thus far during the decades-long construction of Water Tunnel No. 3, the biggest public works project in the city's history. (There is a 24th death also associated with the project — a 12-year-old boy who fell down a 500-foot shaft while playing in a construction site.)

The plaque on this memorial at the edge of Van Cortlandt Park reads:

AUGUST 31, 1778.
UPON THIS FIELD,
CHIEF NIMHAM
AND SEVENTEEN STOCKBRIDGE INDIANS
AS ALLIES OF THE PATRIOTS,
GAVE THEIR LIVES FOR LIBERTY.

and de-treed

A good sign you're in Woodlawn (the neighborhood, not the cemetery)

to the Woodlawn Heights War Memorial

A fitting name

Looking a little better than last time we were here

John Fuller gets the ol' sheet-of-printer-paper-in-an-upside-down-Ziploc-bag treatment:

JUNE 10, 2012

THIS RIVER BIRCH PLANTED IN
MEMORY OF PARK SUPERVISOR
JOHN FULLER FOR HIS SERVICE
IN NYC PARKS

This feels like Super Mario Bros.

School of St. Ann in the Bronx

Skunk cabbage!

According to Wikipedia: "Skunk cabbage is notable for its ability to generate temperatures of up to 15-35°C (59-95°F) above air temperature by cyanide resistant cellular respiration in order to melt its way through frozen ground, placing it among a small group of plants exhibiting thermogenesis."

Here's an NY Times tribute to the generally unsung, if not always unsmelled, plant: "Seduced By a Skunk Cabbage".

This little fenced-in crossing spans the Major Deegan Expressway in Yonkers, just outside the Bronx. The tree line visible to the left — the boundary of Van Cortlandt Park — marks the northern edge of New York City.

The commercial heart of Woodlawn, where the brogues are plentiful and the pubs are too

As you might have guessed, this trail follows the route of the Old Croton Aqueduct. This portion inside Van Cortlandt Park is a bit more secluded than the last stretch I walked.

Like the other weirs along the Old Croton, this structure, standing atop both the aqueduct and an intersecting stream,

provided a means of draining a section of the aqueduct tunnel for repairs or in anticipation of water overflow. The weirs were located near streams so the excess water could be diverted to them. The weirs also had openings at the top of the weir structure, hence providing a source of ventilation for the water and to help regulate the water flow through the tunnel.

Each waste weir had a sluice gate which diverted excess water out of the tunnel and into a nearby stream.

Adjacent to the weir

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