Day 1245

Rebar tentacles

May 28th, 2015



East of MacNeil Park in College Point, there are three neighboring residential developments built out onto a peninsula that juts into the East River. Clambering around the peninsula at water level, you encounter lots of old construction debris, like this tangle of rebar and concrete.

Day 1245



Day 1245




Continuing around the base of the peninsula, I found this carved piece of stone mixed in with all the chunks of concrete. At first I thought it might have been part of the facade of an old synagogue, but then I looked a little closer...

Day 1245



Day 1245

HUSBAND…

May 28th, 2015


Day 1245

FATHER…

May 28th, 2015


Day 1245

An intact headstone

May 28th, 2015



I was standing here thinking about what I had seen so far when I realized I was looking right at a big headstone flipped upside down. Peering beneath it, I was able to make out a name: Katerina Petranek.



The inscription is in Czech:

ZOE ODPOCIVA V PANU
NASE MILOVANA MATKA
KATERINA PETRANEK
ZEMRELA S PROSINCE 1911,
V STARI 69 ROKU.
SPI SLADCE DRAHA MATI
LEHKE ODPOCINUTI DEJSTI PANE.


A rough internet translation tells me that Ms. Petranek died in December 1911 at the age of 69.

Day 1245

Another headstone

May 28th, 2015



I didn't get a close enough shot to read all the text clearly, but, as best I can tell, this stone is for a Jacob Cohen who was born on January (or possibly June) 22, 1917, and died later that year on October 15 or 19, 1917.

Day 1245

George Weir Frowenfeld

May 28th, 2015



1898-1899

Day 1245

Tombstone Beach

May 28th, 2015



So what in the world are all these gravestones doing out here? It turns out that this peninsula I've been scrambling around, with the residential developments built on top of it, is a former landfill that was in operation from about 1963 to 1977. (Compare aerial images from 1951 and 2012 to see the extent of the landfill.) All sorts of things were dumped here over the years, including lots of stones from cemeteries.

Because we treat death and the burial process with such sanctity, it's quite shocking to find these stones haphazardly strewn about the waterfront, and one's immediate sense is that there must be something scandalous going on. But, of course, sometimes gravestones do need to be replaced, and the old ones have to be discarded somewhere. It's just that, in this case, they ended up on the periphery of a landfill that wasn't fully capped, and hence are still exposed and visible decades later. (I should note, however, that they're not exactly in public view. They can only be reached by those who decide for some reason to climb around a steep, rocky stretch of shoreline.)

Day 1245

Harry J. Fisher

May 28th, 2015



Of the stones I've seen so far, Mr. Fisher's is the first that definitively matches up with a record on findagrave.com. He's interred in the old Hungarian Union Field Cemetery (now part of Mount Carmel Cemetery), one of the burial grounds that makes up the massive necropolis stretching across the middle of the Brooklyn-Queens border. I visited him there and found a different stone (below) marking his grave, smaller and simpler than the one above and identical in style to those of the other family members buried in his plot.



Day 1245

David Kartman

May 28th, 2015



I was also able to find out where Mr. Kartman is buried. Weirdly, he's only about 25 feet away from my great-grandmother at Mount Hebron Cemetery in Queens. I went to check on his new gravestone, but it had been knocked over, along with the two stones immediately adjacent to his (one on either side). I'm not sure what to make of this. Did a huge tree branch fall on them? Does someone have a grudge against him and his family? Before you jump to the latter conclusion, I should note that one of the fallen stones next to his (at left, below) is actually in a different section of the cemetery, meaning it presumably belongs to someone unrelated.

Day 1245

Sam Levine

May 28th, 2015



It seems likely that this stone was never installed at Mr. Levine's grave, given that his age is not carved into it.

Day 1245



Day 1245

Abraham Warren

May 28th, 2015



Mr. Warren, like David Kartman, is buried in Mount Hebron Cemetery. I visited his grave there and found the headstone pictured below.



Mr. Warren's widow, Frieda, died 38 years after him. My first thought upon seeing the new stone was that when she passed away, the couple's children, perhaps acting on the wishes of their mother, must have replaced their father's headstone with a shared one for both of their parents.

But Ms. Warren died in 1980, and an NY Times article about all the gravestones out here on the waterfront says the landfill in which they were dumped closed in 1977. Given that discrepancy, and because Mr. Warren's stone lies a few hundred yards east of where the vast majority of the others are clustered, I began to wonder if his stone, as well as some of the rubble surrounding it, was just illegally dumped on the beach here one night by a shady disposal company a few years after the landfill had closed.

Of course, it's also entirely possible that Ms. Warren had the new, shared headstone put in while she was still alive, and that Mr. Warren's old stone had to be removed and discarded while the landfill was still open.

Day 1245




This spot in Soundview Pointe (a.k.a. Soundview Estates), the westernmost of the three private residential developments built on top of the old landfill, offers the clearest look you can get at Tombstone Beach without climbing down to the water.