to the Woodlawn Heights War Memorial

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

and de-treed

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.

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.)

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?

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

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

The Fordham Flash, once again

Mama Schaaf.

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.

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?

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].

and their butterfly companions