Archive for the ‘Long Island City’ Category
Calvary Cemetery Section
I’ve done so many posts on the place that I thought a catch-all page was in order- This will live in the menus to the right of the screen, and will be added to as more posts on the place are added.
Walking Widdershins to Calvary
-photo by Mitch Waxman
Click here to preview this photowalk in a google map
Hunters Point avenue intersects with the ancient course of Greenpoint Avenue at the degenerate extant of Long Island City. The Queens Midtown Expressway also comes back down to earth here, feeding Manhattan vehicular traffic to all points east. This is a very busy intersection, so be mindful of traffic, as fellow pedestrians are rare.
As with anyplace else in Queens you’d want to see, Forgotten-NY has been through here before. Click here for their page on Blissville and Laurel Hill.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Addled as we are by the manipulations of the political class during the 20th century, with its “ism’s” and “movements“, Newtownicans have lost sight of the fact that the Newtown Creek was the center of the world for those who dwelt here in the 19th century. Before the American Civil War, the banks of the Newtown Creek were lined with homes built to the highest aesthetic standard, and peppered with grand hotels which catered to the sportsman and recreational fisherman. It was into this pastoral wildrness that the Calvary Cemetery was embedded in 1848, and which it sought to blend into with its fine arboreal stock and tasteful mastery of the art of landscaping.
It seems odd to us- sitting in our comfortable climate controlled and fully electrified homes and offices, to put a cemetery like this- with its ornate stonework and elaborate masonry, so close to the polluted industrial zones of the nearby Newtown Creek. Calvary spreads atavistically across a deserted and blasted landscape in our 21st century, surrounded by the trampled nest and discarded remnants of the industrial revolution.
Calvary Cemetery at 48th street – photo by Mitch Waxman
As one proceeds up the glacier carved hillocks that define northwestern Queens- climbing away from the terrors of Laurel Hill and leaving the malefic secrets of Maspeth and the Newtown Creek behind, the intrepid pedestrian will pass under and above an arcade of highways and find second Calvary.
Old Calvary is the original cemetery- second, third, and fourth Calvary are the metastasized and sprawling additions to the venerable original- and a significant portion of the Cemetery Belt.
-photo by Mitch Waxman
Just across the street from the site of the former LIRR Penny Bridge station. Easily accessed via the street, upon crossing the gates of Calvary, one will find a staircase carven into the hill by whose ascent the Newtown acropolis may be obtained. Cresting over the surrounding neighborhoods, and soaring over the Newtown Creek’s former wetlands, Calvary Cemetery keeps its secrets buried in centuried silence. Looking south toward Brooklyn, the Kosciuszko bridge approach of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway looms over its passage, carrying millions of vehicles over and across the necropolis of New York City.
Tales of Calvary 1 – The O’Briens
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hallowmas, or All Saints Day, is coincident with the running of the NYC Marathon’s tumult laden course. The secular spectacular merely whets the appetite of your humble narrator for the open skies and sacred vantages found along those unhallowed backwaters of an urban catastrophe called the Newtown Creek.Calvary Cemetery– dripping in centuried glory- sits incongruously in an industrial moonscape stained with aqueer and iridescent colour. It’s marble obelisks and acid rain etched markers landmark it as a necropolis of some forgotten civilization.
Today, I determined to ignore the psychic effects of the graveyard, which are both palpable and remarkable. Resolving to climb to the highest point on this Hill of Laurels, my aim was to discover whose grave would occupy such a socially prominent spot. Secretly, I hoped to discover some celebrity or famous mobster’s resting place. Instead I found the O’Brien’s.
Tales of Calvary 2 – Veterans Day
-photo by Mitch Waxman
21 Roman Catholic Union soldiers are interred amongst the 365 acres of first Calvary Cemetery in Queens, nearby the cuprous waters of the much maligned Newtown Creek.
The wars of the 20th century, terrible in scope and vulgar in effect, cause us to overlook these men whovouchsafed the American Republic in the 19th century as we focus in on the veterans of the second thirty years war which modernity myopically calls World Wars One and Two. Woodrow Wilson proclaimed a federal holiday called Armistice Day in 1919, celebrating the anniversary of the legal end of the first World War in 1918. Congress agreed, seven years later, and then took six years to pass an act which made Armistice day an official United States federal holiday celebrated on November 11 annually.
Ed Rees, a populist Representative from the state of Kansas during the post World War 2 era, spearheaded a successful campaign in 1953 to have “Armistice Day” reclassified as “All Veterans Day” so as to include the veterans of WW2, and the ongoing conflicts fought by our “permanent government” on the world stage.
Tales of Calvary 3 – Rumors and stories
-photo by Mitch Waxman
Swirling, my thoughts.
A vast and byzantine pattern which extends beyond even the coming of the Europeans into the mist of olden days, traced by rail and road, reveals itself step by step as the burning eye of god itself leads me to and fro across the glass strewn Newtown Pentacle.
Bits of information, nuggets of pregnant fact, theosophical themes and mystic iconography obfuscating itstruths and meaning, a maelstrom of barking black dogs crowds my mind. Cowardly and infirm, I run to the grave.
Solace is found amongst the tomb legions, and the nepenthe of their silence.
Tales of Calvary 4 – Triskadekaphobic Paranoia
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Near the crest of one of Calvary Cemetery’s hills, can be found what I’ve described in previous posts as “a tree that is fed by some morbid nutrition”.
A convenient afternoon vantage point for photographing the Johnston mausoleum and a frequent destination, a Hallowmas (nov. 1) stroll through Calvary revealed some interesting goings on beneath the swollen boughs of this loathsome landmark.
Tales of Calvary 5 – Shade and Stillness
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In the past, the desolating loneliness and isolation which define my internal dialogue have been described to you simply – I’m all ‘effed up.
Shunned by those considered normal, my human– all too human- nature forces visceral desires for companionship. Lacking fellowship amongst the the living, one instinctively reaches out for those things which are no longer- or have never been- alive. That odd man in the filthy black raincoat that you might glimpse as you drive past the graveyard, scuttling along taking pictures of sewers and odd boxes in the Cemetery Belt- might very well be your humble narrator.
I was at Calvary Cemetery, intent on investigating the puzzling knots I had observed, beneath a hilltop tree- fed by some morbid nutrition, when I came across the Sweeney monument.
Tales of Calvary 6 – The Empire State Building and the Newsboy Governor.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looming, in this place, is the megapolis. Here lies Tammany, gazing eternally upon their work. The city. The great city.
The greatest and last of their projects is promontory above the shield wall of Manhattan, a familiar vista of Calvary Cemetery offered as an iconic representation by most.
The tower called the Empire State building was built, almost as an act of pure will, by a former newsboy from South Street.
A Shortening of Days
5 days after NYC Election Day, Long Island City – photo by Mitch Waxman
The various potions that my Doctors orders procure from the Apothecary are a double edged sword.
On the one hand- I am proofed against the excesses of my basal nature and underlying health issues, on the other- I am rendered virtually helpless by plunging temperatures. Blood drains from my extremities at the slightest hint of cold, as the aforementioned drugs thin my blood from its natural Port Wine consistency down to a nearly clear Sherry. Induced hemophilia is also a side effect of these potions, and I must avoid sharp edges, or I might pop the balloon of my skinvelope. Normal clotting is suppressed by these medications, and a relatively minor injury could cause me to “bleed out”. I’m all ‘effed up.
As you read this whining confessional screed, the naked steel of winter has been unsheathed at last, here in the Newtown Pentacle.
Northern Blvd., Queens- photo by Mitch Waxman
The dramatic and life threatening health issues that I experienced 1,086 days ago resulted in an interesting psychological symptom. Since then, I tend to perceive time in terms of days, not years.
For instance, I am 15,451 days old, started this blog 188 days ago, and it is 13 days till christmas. I find this solar perspective an interesting vantage on the earth, although such compulsive fragmentation of time into manageable units surely signals some malign psychiatric process at work. This is a weird time of year for me, lords and ladies of newtown, harshly shadowed with reflections of- what life used to be.
Back amongst the living
Wasn’t it nice of this movie production (an Angelina Jolie flick no less) to be setting up for a shoot at the end of the Queenboro Centennial Parade? – photo by Mitch Waxman
Newtown Pentacle Cemetery Month went a little long, by about an extra month and a half, sorry. We’ll be out and amongst the living city for a awhile. I promise.
Although I’ve got a few Calvary Cemetery posts “in my pocket”, I’m going to hold off the graveyard stuff for a bit, and need to go do some shooting and research at Mount Olivet anyway.
Here’s a few interesting links, including a “things to do” happening in the Subway.
- A page on Review Avenue’s Pennybridge Station came to my attentions- although I seem to be the last person to have found this site:
Check out Arthur John Huenke’s Flushing Railroad Company and Penny Bridge Station. - Occult Crime: A law enforcement Primer, from the State of California
- A special event will be happening down in the Subway on the V line in December, Vintage Cars. Click here for more.
- Check out this reportage of the Tammany Club carving up Queens into a recognizably modern shape in a 1901 NYTimes.com article
- Although this was a “summer thing”, I still bust a gut when I see this.
Mt Zion 6- Crystal Oblivion
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Awakening from the dead faint which had ended my ruminations on those oppressions suffered by both Jew and Roma in a war torn exemplar of peasant ignorance and malign oligarchy which is the European Peninsula, your humble narrator noticed the gloaming of late afternoon settling upon the centenarian graveyard and realized that one way or another- an escape must be hazarded from the oblivion of Mount Zion cemetery if I ever desired to return to the yellow brick lanes of Astoria.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The curious singsong chant of those odd children had stopped, and echoing along the tombstones was the sound of wholesome and cheerful laughing. From my vantage, I could discern that the first group of children were fleeing from a second, whose colorful clothing and raven hair marked them as the picturesque crowd I had spotted earlier on 53rd avenue. The flabby jowled, unblinking, scaly group of youths which had been tormenting me- and whose apparent leader was a girl carrying a curiously polydactyl cat whose aspect “I did not like”- were running off in the direction of that stygian cataract called the Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Regaining my composure, I realized that I had found the highest spot in Zion, and watched as the group of dark haired and festively adorned children jeered the fleeing “others”. I turned for a moment, looking south toward Brooklyn, along the gates of a Sanitation Dept. Garbage truck depot. This is a lonely spot, tragic and shunned.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Populated by graves of children, often stillborn, this is the highest point of elevation in Mt. Zion by my estimation. I resolved to make my way for the gates, and felt an eerie tiredness take over me. Cemeteries are uncomfortable places not because of the omnipresent reminders of mortality, but because they remind us that anonymity is the ultimate fate of nearly all of us.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All they were, and had done, and built- the ultimate meaning of themselves- led to centuried silence and the anonymity of the tomb. I’ve been asking myself, lately, why I’ve been so compelled to spend my time with them, instead of amongst the living. A lot of wise old jewish grandmothers are buried here, and my own would say that this recent pursuit is “no good for you, go see a movie instead”.
She also told me, when I told her I intended to follow a career in visual arts, that “all I wanted was to be a bum in the village with a needle in my arm”.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Mission Statements – 1 – Breaking character
One of my quasi mystical opinions is that by telling a story, transmitting the lore of civilization from one generation to another, you keep the subject of the story alive- in a sense. We know the story of Beowulf, and Christ, and Churchill. In my ham handed and alliterative patois of pop cultural imagery and historical allusion, this notion of “telling the hero’s story” (with the “hero” being the working class) is part of my motivation behind these explorations. In a sense, I fancy myself as C-3PO telling the story of Luke and Leia to the Ewoks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Mission Statements – 2 – Horns and Dilemmas
A vast and shining monument to future archaeology is what I see the Cemetery Belt of western Queens and North Brooklyn as, awaiting the end of living memory and improved imaging technology. Vast dilemmas of conscience often plague me as I make the “selects” from the hundreds of shots I’ll gather at just one of the many locations explored at the Newtown Pentacle. That’s an identifiable face, or corporate trademark, or the ridiculous laws which require the owner of a skyscraper to approve the publication of an image of their structure. The graveyard stuff is touchy, and I attempt to only show graves of those who died well out of “living memory”, which is a flexible topic for me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Mission Statements – 3 – Contradictions and Logic
Problematic, because it’s self defined, my “living memory” concept is roughly this- if the stone is older than the second world war- I consider it fair game and part of the public record. Saying that, if you’ve seen a gravestone of a relative in one of my shots that you’d really rather not have public, contact me and it’s pulled (I’m not a dick)- just know that the shot was chosen for either its odd qualities or historical significance (like the O’Brien monument in Old Calvary), or because it’s a beautiful piece of sculpture that was chosen to illustrate the esthetic or political milieu of an era I’m trying to describe. Any editorial implications of the accompanying quoted references (from abc.com, in italics) or “humble narrator” copy should be discarded as the product of a sick, cowardly, and weary man who is “all ‘effed up”. No one will visit my grave, Lords and Ladies of Newtown, except to gloat and defecate.
I also never trespass, enter onto Railroad properties uninvited, or use transportation of any kind other than my feet when I’m out on one of my little missions. Kissing the right posterior and being “nice” offers tremendous access to these places, “legally”, and brings insight and opportunity. Why make trouble?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back to the post:
When I passed out of the ancient cemetery, through the western section’s gates, I saw that group of gaily dressed children who had chased off those menacingly mutant urchins that had caused me to faint three times as I hid in the shadows of this garden of obelisks.
One of the oddest moments of the day occurred when a waste hauler’s truck sped down Maurice Avenue at top speed, occluding my view of them for a few seconds, during which they disappeared. Puzzled, I scuttled back to the waiting arms of Astoria, and the entire way I thought I heard the creaking agony of wooden carriage wheels.
Mt Zion 5- Sunken Houses of Sleep
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Steeling myself for the inevitable humiliating encounter with those oddly menacing children who seemed to be waiting for my reemergence on Maurice Avenue, I moved down the hill from the 58th street side of the burial grounds.
Older than my years, vast psychological inadequacies and shameful physical “episodes” render your humble narrator a helpless emotional cripple. Even the thought of direct confrontation with that which may exist around the Newtown Creek- or because of it- is enough to make me lightheaded and coat my skin in cold sweat. Staying out of sight, I broke into a dogtrot instead of my usual scuttle, and continued along the central artery of Mount Zion Cemetery. On the hill is the DSNY’s gargantuan Queens West Garage complex and an accompanying garbage incinerator.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The counterpoint of a Jewish Cemetery next door to an industrial incinerator is obvious and exhibits poor municipal siting, conversely this is probably an ideal location for such industry. Western Queens is the backbone of New York City, from a metropolitan industrial complex’s point of view.
Airports, railroad yards, maritime facilities, petrochemical storage and processing, illegal and legal dumping, sewer plants, waste and recycling facilities, cemeteries. The borders of the Newtown Pentacle’s left ventricle are festooned with heavy industry and the toll taken on the health of both land and population is manifest. A vast national agglutination of technologies and a sprawl of transportation arteries stretching across the continent are all centered on Manhattan- which is powered, fed, and flushed by that which may be found around a shimmering ribbon of abnormality called the Newtown Creek.
from jhom.com
The lion motif was common in the ancient Middle Eastern civilizations as a battling, fighting and attacking force. In the Bible, the lion is portrayed as both capable of destroying and punishing, and of saving and protecting. In ancient Jewish art we find the lions in this protective role, guarding the Holy Ark or at the entrances to the chapel, as in the sculpture of the ancient synagogues at Sardis (in Asia Minor), Horazin and Bar’am (in Palestine), and in many mosaics dating from the early Byzantine period.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
But that’s the “why” of how these people came to be buried in America, of all places.
They weren’t coming to be free (that’s Roosevelt talking), most of them, except to be free of poverty and warfare.
In 1894, when Mrs. Chasnov, (pictured below) was born, the last Tsar of Russia took his throne succeeding his father Tsar Alexander 3. Anarchists were tossing bombs in European capitals, and in New York City- the “Robert Moses” of the 19th century, Andrew Haswell Green, formed the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society.
In 1894, the last known antichrist was only 5 years old, and lived near Linz.
from wikipedia
The stele, as they are called in an archaeological context, is one of the oldest forms of funerary art. Originally, a tombstone was the stone lid of a stone coffin, or the coffin itself, and a gravestone was the stone slab that was laid over a grave. Now all three terms are also used for markers placed at the head of the grave. Originally graves in the 1700s also contained footstones to demarcate the foot end of the grave. Footstones were rarely carved with more than the deceased’s initials and year of death, and many cemeteries and churchyards have removed them to make cutting the grass easier. Note however that in many UK cemeteries the principal, and indeed only, marker is placed at the foot of the grave.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is the generation that “it” happened to.
Not these people, of course, who were safe in America- but their cousins and parents and friends who had stayed back in ancient Europe. They saw the Great War play out, displacing millions, and thought that at last the eternal struggles between Hapsburgh and Austrian and Turk and Frenchman and Russian had sorted themselves out.
It wasn’t just Jews, or Irish, or Italians- even the Roma came to America to find work. And the skills possessed by the Cunning Folk were older than the narrow streets of Rome, or the impenetrable complexity of the New York of its time- London, or even the lost city of pillared Irem in the pathless deserts of Arabia.
from nytimes.com
Maspeth is named for the Mespat Indians, who originally settled near what is now Mount Zion Cemetery, on the neighborhood’s edge. In 1642, the first formal colony was established in the area, though conflicts with Indians caused settlers to flee east into what is now Elmhurst.
Mount Olivet Cemetery boasts a much-cherished Manhattan view, and Nathanael West, who wrote “Miss Lonelyhearts” and “The Day of the Locust,” is buried at Mount Zion.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In Europe, hatred of the Hebrew race has some understandable historical underpinnings. The Moorish and Turk governments employed Jews as officials and clerks, often assigning them as tax collectors to the serf and freeman villages of their conquests. After a period of time, when the islamic tide had been pushed back by Russian, German, Pole, and especially the Wallachian and Hungarian states, the Jews were left behind.
When Peter the Great settled Jews in the so-called “Pale”, it was meant to be a punishment for the Szhlactas and Boyars (Barons and Dukes) who had opposed him. Ultimately, anti-semitism is a political thema which took root and transformed into something cultural.
Hatred of the Roma, though, is something else entirely.
from junipercivic.com
In the vicinity of Mount Zion and lower Calvary cemeteries were swamps. Frogs, polywogs, goldfish were plentiful among the tall cattails and were sport for young boys. Punks were plentiful among the cattails, the plump brown ones were cut down, dried in the sun and when lit gave off an aromatic scent that was not only pleasing to the smell, but was said to keep away mosquitoes which were a nuisance.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Lingering at the suggestively open door of a tomb, trying to ignore the singsong chant of those menacing children, your humble narrator began to once again feel light headed.
also from junipercivic.com
A short distance away along Maurice Avenue, was a Gypsy Camp. A core group of gypsies lived there permanently and others came from far and wide to visit. Colorfully dressed in gypsy regalia, they danced, sang, and partied, cooking suckling pigs on spits over roaring fires and living in ramshackle huts and tents. For them a carefree existence, but I must admit, for the local lads and lassies a somewhat frightening scene and we watched from afar. When a member of the tribe died, the wake was most often held in Vogel’s Funeral Parlor which was located on Grand Avenue opposite the main entrance to Mount Olivet Cemetery. Gypsies from all around the country would come to pay their respects, especially if the deceased was a member of the Royal family.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Metal working, particularly copper smithing, that’s what the Ludar- or as the modern Croats and Bosnians call them- the Rudari- were famed for and that’s most likely how they ended up in Maspeth. That and their skill in training animals.
Ever wonder why the annual tradition of the Circus trains coming to LIC and Maspeth, with its spectacle of Elephants marching through the Midtown Tunnel, started? The Rudari were animal trainers, as well as being copper workers. The metal shaping work was an inheritance- Rudar means miner- which is what this tribe of Roma was forced to do during their enslavement to the princes of Europe. After their suffrage, they became trainers of bears, monkeys, and horses for circuses.
All this continued in America.
Incidentally, in Romania, the Rudari were known as the Ursari. The royal potentate that ruled over them was the Voivode of the Wallachian Throne, seated high in the Carpathian Mountains, and in the 15th century- that throne was occupied by Vlad Tepes.
Dracula, as known in the west, and the gypsies mentioned in Stoker’s book were the Ursari, or Rudari.
from wikipedia
Following the immigration waves of the 19th century, Maspeth was home to a shanty town of Boyash (Ludar) Gypsies between 1925 and 1939, though this was eventually bulldozed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just what kind of place is this Newtown Pentacle, anyway?
That’s the last thing I thought, another “very bad idea”, before I passed out again in another dead faint.
The Ludar, or “Romanian Gypsies,” also immigrated to the United States during the great immigration from southern and eastern Europe between 1880 and 1914. Most of the Ludar came from northwestern Bosnia. Upon their arrival in the United States they specialized as animal trainers and showpeople, and indeed passenger manifests show bears and monkeys as a major part of their baggage. Most of de Wendler-Funaro’s photographs of this group were taken in Maspeth, a section of the borough of Queens in New York City, where the Ludar created a “village” of homemade shacks that existed from about 1925 to 1939, when it was razed. A similar settlement stood in the Chicago suburbs during the same period.
The Newtown Pentacle 