Description of the attraction
Woodlon Cemetery is one of the largest and most beautiful in New York. Outstanding landscaping and 1,300 magnificent family mausoleums have made Woodlon a National Historic Landmark.
Founded in 1863, at first the cemetery was an ordinary rural churchyard - curved paths around trees, a picturesque natural lake. This quarter of the Bronx still looks like the countryside in some places, especially along the banks of the sleepy Bronx River. However, in 1867, the cemetery's trustees opted for a new style that still characterizes many American cemeteries: no fences, low slabs, or elegant stone monuments surrounded by a continuous lawn, ornamental trees are selectively planted.
The cemetery grew especially actively from 1880 to 1930, during these decades many tombs of the most famous families of the country appeared here. The mausoleums and monuments here were designed by the best architects of the turn of the XIX-XX centuries - John Russell Pope, Cass Gilbert, James Gamble Rogers, and the landscape was shaped by many famous designers, including Beatrix Jones Farrand and Ellen Biddle Shipman.
Anyone can visit Woodlawn, it is especially convenient to come here by car: the space is riddled with asphalt paths. If the tourist is going to take pictures, you need to get permission - the security guard will show you the way to the office at the entrance. It will not be superfluous to take a burial map there: more than 300 thousand people are buried on 160 hectares.
Visitors usually want to explore the luxurious mausoleums first. You should definitely admire the tomb of the Belmonts - this is a copy of the Saint-Hubert chapel in the castle of Amboise, where, according to legend, Leonardo da Vinci is buried. The mausoleum of Frank Woolworth, who built the famous Woolworth Building, was erected in the Egyptian style, with sphinxes at the entrance. Reminiscent of the Parthenon, with Ionic columns around the perimeter, Jay Gould's mausoleum is tightly closed and has no commemorative plaques. They say that one of the richest and most hated people in America, Jay Gould, was afraid that his body would be stolen for ransom.
At the cemetery, among others, are buried British and Canadian soldiers who died in World War II, Admiral David Glasgow Farragut, who became famous during the Civil War. Many musicians lie in Woodlon's land - Duke Ellington, "father of the blues" William Christopher Handy, jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, writers - Herman Melville, Clarence Day, polar explorer George De Long, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, after whom he was named an airport.
The businessman and congressman Isidor Strauss, who died on the Titanic, is also buried here. His wife Ida, who was offered a place in the boat, chose to stay, saying the legendary phrase: “I will not be separated from my husband. As we lived, we will die - together. " Their mausoleum is half a cenotaph (empty grave) - only Isidore lies here, Ida's body was never found. The inscription on the wall quotes Solomon's "Song of Songs": "Great waters cannot extinguish love, and rivers will not flood it."
