Posts Tagged ‘Calvary Cemetery’
Tales of Calvary 8- the Abbot
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While wandering through Calvary Cemetery recently, I came upon a curious monument whose sculptural elements included a life sized portrait, and whose dedication was meant to honor a man named Florence Scannell. The stone additionally bore a curious screed- “The Abbot”. “Dedicated to the memory of Florence Scannell by his brother John J.” is displayed prominently on its face. This stirred a sleeping memory, and I tried to remember why the name Scannell is so important. I said it out loud- John J. Scannell?
Wait a minute… John J. Scannell was the first chief of the NYFD, grand sachem of Tammany Hall, and a notorious turn of the century raconteur who became “king of the hill” in the often violent political world of 19th century New York City politics.
Bare knuckled, the electoral system back then resembled modern gang wars. Bearded men were paid to vote, taken to a barber shop for a shave and a shot of whiskey, and then paid to vote again. Paid armies of volunteers rousted saloons and bars that supported their political enemies. With political bosses paying the tab, taverns became organizing points for local “get out the vote” efforts. The poor didn’t care, for a day they could drink enough to forget and even eat a real meal- with meat, and all they had to do was vote the way they were told. The bosses were the bosses, and your place in “the line” could be revoked at any time if you fell out of favor with them. There was no “safety net”, so you had to just “go along”. Sometimes the other party would send gangs of street toughs into their opponents establishments- “bar busting”.
For more on the milieu of political life for the working class of the 19th century, I would suggest a gander at “The Jungle” Upton Sinclair’s “progressive” propaganda piece, or taking a peek at Jacob Riis’s “How the Other Half Lives“.
The Scannell brothers are described as having been engaged in such “bar busting” activities in 1869, when brother Florence ran for Alderman from the 18th ward against a Tammany candidate. At 23rd st. and second avenue, on Dec. 3rd, a Tammany man named Thomas Donaghue ran afoul of the Scannells, who were employed to “clean out” and “bust” the saloon he owned and operated.
from pbs.org
The year 1898 ushered in a new era of firefighting. On midnight of January 1, 1898, Greater New York was formed by uniting the five boroughs, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. The Board of Fire Commissioners was replaced by a single Commissioner, John J. Scannell, who had been head of the Board since 1894 and was appointed by Mayor R.A. Van Wyck. All of the area’s volunteer departments were to be replaced by the FDNY, and Chief Hugh Bonner assumed control of three paid departments: New York, Brooklyn, and Long Island; 121 engines, 46 trucks, one horse wagon, and a water tower; in all, 309 square miles of firefighting territory.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Scannells and a dozen of their men produced weapons and engaged in a fierce battle with Donaghue’s own crew of toughs. Gunfire erupted and Florence Scannel was shot in the back, the bullet embedding itself in his spinal column. Rushed to the nearby Bellevue Hospital, Florence suffered a lingering death, finally passing on July 10, 1870, with his brother John at his side. John J. Scannell swore an oath to avenge his brother, and kill the man who shot him in the back– the Tammany man, Thomas Donaghue.
Donaghue’s handlers fixed things up with the courts, and he returned to his familiar Saloon on 23rd st. and second avenue.
On Sept. 19th, at the corner of 17th and third, an odd looking man wearing a slouched hat and fake beard stepped out of the shadows and blasted a hole in Donaghue’s chest with a derringer pistol. Donaghue ultimately survived this attempt on his life, and Scannell discarded his disguise as he escaped his pursuers fleeing through Irving Place and Union Square. John J. later surrendered to a Police Sgt. after taking refuge on Long Island, and was indicted by a Grand Jury for the crime, but was never charged and released on $10,000 bail.
That’s $10,000 in 1870…
In November of 1872, Donaghue was attending an auction at the Apollo Theatre on 28th street, and a man wearing a cloak and slouch hat approached him. A large caliber pistol was produced and the middle of Donaghue’s face disappeared. Four more shots, three in the face, were pumped into the now prostrate Donaghue. The killer fled and was apprehended by a Police Captain named McElwain, who immediately identified the assassin as John J. Scannell. Such quick identification of Scannell was possible only because the arresting officer had been the one who arrested him for the the earlier attempt on Donaghue, when he was a Sgt.
The event was seminal, for as John J. Scannell sat in a gaol called “The Tombs”, another sat beside him. That night, John J. Scannell met Richard Croker. Someday, they would become “The Big Two” at Tammany Hall and rule over New York City.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
John J. Scannell was born on the lower East Side of Manhattan and found early work as a horse dealer- moving on to Saloon Keeper and then Professional Gambler. Charged with the murder of Donaghue, he pled insanity, and after a 3 month stint in an asylum in Utica, returned to local politics. He owned horses and raced them on the national circuit, as did Richard Croker. Rising in Tammany with his partner Croker, Scannell ran the 25th electoral district in Manhattan for many years, and desired the post of NYFD commissioner in that newly unified pile of gold called “the City of Greater New York”. Protests were recorded citywide, but Mayor Van Wyck appointed him chief of the newly unified citywide firefighting brigades. He served in that capacity until 1901, and fought corruption charges associated with his appointment until 1906 in court. At 67, in 1907, Scannell was sued for $15,000 for kissing the daughter of his housekeeper 3 times without consent.
Scannell died at 78 in Jamaica, Queens- far from his retirement estate in Freeport, L.I.
The Abbot, as it turns out, is a Horse.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Scannell paid the scandalous amount of $26,500 at a Madison Square auction, the highest ever paid for a single Horse to that time, to purchase the Abbott.
That’s $26,500 in 1900…
The obituary for the Horse is actually longer than the one for the owner. The fact that Scannell engraved a Horse’s name on the monument to his dead brother, and his own eventual grave marker, shows the esteem felt by Scannell himself for the animal. Oddly enough, and this is a rare thing for Calvary Cemetery, The NYTimes once did an article on the raising of this monument which happened in 1914.
Hey, you never know what you’re going to find at Calvary Cemetery.
Tales of Calvary 7
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I just can’t sit on this one anymore. After a spree of “all cemetery” postings in November and December, I decided to take a step back from the grave, but I just can’t stop myself…
Promises would be offered to you, lords and ladies of Newtown, not to spend too much time amongst the dead in these first days of the new year, but I’d probably break them.
Paper fades, buildings fall, but Calvary is eternal and undying. Dripping in its centuried silence and nitre choked glory, the emerald desolations of Calvary Cemetery offer a pastoral transit between tumultuous neighborhoods in the Newtown Pentacle, and that weird old man in the filthy black raincoat you might glimpse as you drive by is often your humble narrator.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On this particular day, a sunny Saturday (Thanksgiving weekend in 2009), I wasn’t transiting Calvary.
I had come here with a definite purpose, searching for the grave of a man who died in the early 30’s rumored to have been involved with the illegal smuggling of strange statuettes into the United States in the 1920’s from some impossibly remote pacific island. This man, a Massachusetts merchant named Gilman, was killed in a freak nocturnal accident, apparently by a bale of paper which had fallen out of some warehouse window along the Newtown Creek. His oddly deformed body was found by workmen the next morning, and the Coroner pronounced the death accidental. The victim was buried in Calvary’s public section as an act of charity, and under the assumption that Gilman was an Irish name. His belongings and personal valuables, made from some queer kind of gold sculpted into wild and heretical forms, were collected by a schooner captain whose three masted ship appeared unbidden at the Penny Bridge docks one night during an unnaturally thick fog. The Captain, a Massachusetts trader named Marsh, paid for a custom and eccentric grave marker to be erected for this Gilman fellow somewhere in Calvary. It remains elusive, but I shall find it- I found Al Smith!
As is often the case, my befuddled and inept investigations were swept wildly off course by a highly suggestible and credulous nature which makes me vulnerable to wild flights of shivering cowardice and shameful paranoia. Such timidity does not suit one who stands and stares into whatever abyss happens to be before him, and what I saw chilled me with its wild possibilities. It was Thanksgiving weekend, and Calvary was as quiet as… well… a tomb.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As seen in the above shots, the overgrown monument with its vine covered cupola intrigued and drew my attention. In accordance with usual methods, the object was photographed from many angles, and my path led me widdershins around it. As mentioned in the last paragraph, thanksgiving weekend had evinced a general evacuation of the area surrounding that bulkheaded duct of urban horror called the Newtown Creek, and like their counterparts in the spires of Manhattan it would seem that the workers of Calvary got off early on the previous Wednesday. Just dropped their shovels, as it were.
That’s when I saw it, said “oh. oh… no… just keep walking… don’t take any pictures of…”. Unfortunately, my finger was already depressing the button on my camera. I had lost all control, and still can’t stop myself from posting about it weeks later… I’m all ‘effed up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In the interest of full disclosure, the names on the two grave markers are obscured as they were modern burials. If a grave is at least older than me, I feel fine about publishing a photo or talking about who it holds. If it’s an early 1900’s burial- fair game. (note: a cool thing happened recently- a sepulchral portrait, randomly chosen and published in the Mt. Zion series of postings, resulted in a certain Pentacle reader seeing his grandmother’s face for the first time) These interments, however, date from the early 1990’s and later. The context of this post demands some discretion, and censoring the names of the deceased whose graves are seen is definitely the right thing to do.
Now on to something you don’t normally see… and I am cognizant that the presentation of the following is vulgar and in very bad taste. I just can’t stop myself… Its like some alien thing is controlling me…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There is a limited amount of time that one can tolerate solitary exposure to Calvary Cemetery, as the marble crown of Laurel Hill is a sort of psychic Chernobyl. It preys upon you- this place- in subtle ways, and comes at you in a manner not unlike the gradual stupefaction brought on by liquor. On New Year’s Eve, someone offered me three plots here for free, and withdrew the offer when I explained what a gravesite in Old Calvary is actually worth. Coincidence? hmmm… The place has noticed me, and it is trying to draw me further in…
Like ionizing radiation, whose damage to healthy living flesh is calculated by a multiplex of intensity and duration, whatever it is that lurks in the aether of Calvary is invisible, insidious, and real. Looking into an open grave like this, in this place, carries the comparable psychic risks of unshielded exposure to the thermonuclear eye of god itself.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What I can’t do, is use my favorite catch phrase. The “who can guess…” one. Horrors too horrible for the graves holding lurk into the abyss, and loathsomeness waits below, but…
That’s what I was thinking as I passed out, again, in a dead faint. Luckily I fell backwards.
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.
Tales of Calvary 6
– 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.
from wikipedia
The Empire State Building is a 102-story landmark Art Deco skyscraper in New York City at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. Its name is derived from the nickname for the state of New York. It stood as the world’s tallest building for more than forty years, from its completion in 1931 until construction of the World Trade Center’s North Tower was completed in 1972. Following the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, the Empire State Building once again became the tallest building in New York City and New York State.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The people buried here arrived in and encountered a very different city- a divergent concept of a city- than the one we imagine. They were fleeing religious war and famine, and even the hazardous journey to an unknown country was better than staying where they were. The first surge of them was Catholic, they came from Poland, Germany, Italy, and like that newsboy from South Street – Ireland.
Especially Ireland.
(the Jews were present as well, but were subsumed by larger descriptions of nationality, and they would describe themselves as Germans or Poles before bringing up religion)
Before the Civil War, New York was ruled by the “knickerbockracy“, a social elite who were labeled “the 400” by Samuel Ward MacAllister. Greedy poor and useless, immigrant mouths to feed were dumped by the courts of Europe on New York’s docks, where they instantly took to crime and profligacy. The dregs arrived like ocean waves, and the disgusted Anglophile and Dutch elites saw to it that these wretched masses would be excluded from power and opportunity in the protestant republic.
also from wikipedia
The Empire State Building was designed by William F. Lamb from the architectural firm Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, which produced the building drawings in just two weeks, using its earlier designs for the Reynolds Building in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and the Carew Tower in Cincinnati, Ohio (designed by the architectural firm W.W. Ahlschlager & Associates) as a basis. Every year the staff of the Empire State Building sends a Father’s Day card to the staff at the Reynolds Building in Winston-Salem to pay homage to its role as predecessor to the Empire State Building. The building was designed from the top down. The general contractors were The Starrett Brothers and Eken, and the project was financed primarily by John J. Raskob and Pierre S. du Pont.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Ethnic associations formed amongst the new immigrants, who were victimized by discriminatory policies of government and racial prejudice. One of these ethnic clubs began political organization amongst the immigrant grass roots, and registered voters began to appear in the river front slums, and especially in the Five Points in Manhattan.
from wikipedia
Tammany Hall (Founded May 12, 1789 as the Tammany Society, and also known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order), was the Democratic Party political machine that played a major role in controlling New York City politics and helping immigrants (most notably the Irish) rise up in American politics from the 1790s to the 1960s. It usually controlled Democratic Party nominations and patronage in Manhattan from the mayoral victory of Fernando Wood in 1854 through the election of John P. O’Brien in 1932. Tammany Hall was permanently weakened by the election of Fiorello La Guardia on a “fusion” ticket of Republicans, reform-minded Democrats, and independents in 1934, and despite a brief resurgence in the 1950s, it ceased to exist in the 1960s.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Impeachable offense was just part of doing business back then, and the ethnic associations could muster significant and reliable turnouts on election day for whoever was willing to pay. Soon, the associations began to congeal into ethnic blocks. The largest one of them all was called Tammany Hall, and it began to pick its own people to run for office instead of supporting the landed gentry or the degenerate Dutch.
also from wikipedia
Despite occasional defeats, Tammany was consistently able to survive and, indeed, prosper; it continued to dominate city and even state politics. Under leaders like John Kelly and Richard Croker, Charles Francis Murphy and Timothy Sullivan, it controlled Democratic politics in the city. Tammany opposed William Jennings Bryan in 1896.
In 1901, anti-Tammany forces elected a reformer, Republican Seth Low, to become mayor. From 1902 until his death in 1924, Charles Francis Murphy was Tammany’s boss. In 1927 the building on 14th Street was sold. The new building on East 17th Street and Union Square East was finished and occupied by 1929.[6] In 1932, the machine suffered a dual setback when Mayor James Walker was forced from office and reform-minded Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president of the United States. Roosevelt stripped Tammany of federal patronage, which had been expanded under the New Deal—and passed it instead to Ed Flynn, boss of the Bronx. Roosevelt helped Republican Fiorello La Guardia become mayor on a Fusion ticket, thus removing even more patronage from Tammany’s control. La Guardia was elected in 1933 and re-elected in 1937 and 1941. He was the first anti-Tammany Mayor to be re-elected and his extended tenure weakened Tammany in a way that previous “reform” Mayors had not.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That boy from the South Street water front, who watched as the East River Bridge being built, lost his father at age 13. He left school and went to work, first at an oil company and later at the Fulton Fish Market- which netted him the astounding salary of $15 per week. He developed a certain celebrity in the 4th ward because of his good fortunes, and came to the attentions of the Tammany men, who discovered a certain “likeability” in him.
from pbs.org
Built during the Depression between 1930 and 1931, the Empire State Building became the world’s tallest office building — surpassing the Chrysler Building by a whopping 204 feet. The design of the building changed 16 times during planning and construction, but 3,000 workers completed the building’s construction in record time: one year and 45 days, including Sundays and holidays. The Empire State Building is composed of 60,000 tons of steel, 200,000 cubic feet of Indiana limestone and granite, 10 million bricks, and 730 tons of aluminum and stainless steel.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By 1895, the young man was appointed a clerk to the Commissioner of Jurors and was noticed by Thomas F. Foley- the boss of Tammany. Shortly, He was an assemblyman in Albany, and spent 12 years gathering patronage and clout in the capital of New York State. By 1913, he had become Speaker of the House and the most influential man in Albany. As a reward for his services, Tammany appointed him Sheriff of New York, a lucrative position in those days. By 1918, He was elected Governor of New York State and came to national prominence during his 4 terms in office.
In 1928 he ran for President of the United States, this Irish kid from South Street, and a young Franklin D. Roosevelt was honored with placing his name before the convention. He lost to Herbert Hoover, whose many supporters publicly voiced concern about the Tammany contagion spreading into Washington and across the nation. In 1932, he lost the nomination of his party to Franklin D. Roosevelt.
from wikipedia
Horses were used for transportation in 1900, as they had been throughout the history of the city. There were 200,000 of them in the city, producing nearly 2,500 short tons (2,300 t) of manure daily. It accumulated in the streets and was swept to the sides like snow. The smell was quite noticeable. Introduction of motor vehicles was a profound relief.
The municipal consolidation would also precipitate greater physical connections between the boroughs. The building of the New York City Subway, as the separate Interborough Rapid Transit Company and Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation systems, and the later Independent Subway System, and the opening of the first IRT line in 1905 marked the beginning of what became a force for population spread and development. The Williamsburg Bridge 1903 and the Manhattan Bridge 1909 further connected Manhattan to the rapidly expanding bedroom community in Brooklyn. The world-famous Grand Central Terminal opened as the world’s largest train station on February 1, 1913, replacing an earlier terminal on the site. It was preceded by Pennsylvania Station, several blocks to the south.
These years also saw the peak of European immigration and the shifting of that immigration from Western Europe to Southern and Eastern Europe. On June 15, 1904 over 1,000 people, mostly German immigrants, were killed when the steamship General Slocum caught fire and burned in the East River, marking the beginning of the end of the community in Little Germany. The German community was replaced by growing numbers of poorer immigrants on the Lower East Side. On March 25, 1911 the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Greenwich Village took the lives of 145 mostly Italian and Jewish female garment workers, which would eventually lead to great advancements in the city’s fire department, building codes, and workplace regulations.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Disgusted with politics and betrayed by the last of the Knickerbocker elite, the newsboy governor turned to private business. Amongst other ventures, he became president of that company which would construct the Empire State Building at the height of the Great Depression. One or two of his friends also came in on the venture.
That iconic structure is located, incidentally, on the former site of the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel– a regular haunt and preferred meeting place for the elite “four hundred”.
from greatbuildings.com
The architectural, commercial, and popular success of the Empire State Building depended on a highly rationalized process, and equally efficient advertising and construction campaigns. Skillful designers of Manhattan office buildings, architects Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon were familiar with the imperatives of design and construction efficiency that maximized investors’ returns by filling the building with tenants as soon as possible. …
The Empire State Building, like most art deco skyscrapers, was modernistic, not modernist. It was deliberately less pure, more flamboyant and populist than European theory allowed. It appeared to be a sculpted or modeled mass, giving to business imagery a substantial character…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As Governor, this Tammany man rewrote the labor laws after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and, oversaw the creation of much of modern New York. As a private citizen, he used his extensive patronage and political muscle to build the Empire State Building in an astounding 410 days. President Herbert Hoover cut the ribbon on opening day, however.
His name was Alfred E. Smith. Al the happy warrior to his constituents.
Governor Smith died October 4, 1944 at 6:28 AM.
Click here to listen to a history.com audio file of Al Smith speaking “on New York”.
Click here to access a google map with the actual location of the monument, which doesn’t seem to exist anywhere else on the web.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
He lies in Calvary next to his wife, Catherine A. Dunn Smith.
Alongside them are those generations that came to a city -of wooden clapboard walls rising from unpaved roads – and died in a shining metropolis of glass and steel towers accomplished by their labors. The great city of the age was built by those that lie in Calvary Cemetery, here in the muladhara of the Newtown Pentacle.
note: the view of the Empire State Building, from the gravesite of Governor Smith, is obscured by more modern mausoleum monuments.
In 1918, to the surprise of many, he was elected Governor of the State of New York. Although he lost the 1920 election, he ran successfully again in 1922, 1924, and 1926 – making him one of three New York State Governors to be elected to four terms. While Governor, he achieved the passage of extensive reform legislation, including improved factory laws, better housing requirements, and expanded welfare services. Additionally, he reorganized the State government into a consolidated and business-like structure.
Governor Smith won the Democratic Party’s nomination for President of the United States in 1928. During his campaign he continued to champion the cause of urban residents.
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.
The Association for Gravestone Studies makes available this pdf file of a 19th century monumental bronze catalog, incidentally, as well as this discussion of “White Bronze“.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Unlike the celebrated O’Brien clan, whose final destination is found closer to the apex of Calvary’s hills, the Sweeneys are shadowed by time. Social standing and class status drove the generations buried up here to seek a favorable and expensive bit of real estate, away from the common rabble and poor being laid into marshy trenches at the shallow of the hill in their thousands, and to lie for eternity with “their own kind”.
The princes of the City, and their courts, lie in Calvary Cemetery– not far from worm scarred timbers whose titan bulk restricts an elixir of extinction known as the fabled Newtown Creek from mingling with the blessed soils of Calvary. Unguessable springs of subterrene putrefaction percolating with horrors beyond the grave’s holding flow still beneath the streets of Newtown- vestigial streams and waterways that are imprisoned in masonry and brick tunnels. Directly mixing, in hideous congress, the liquefied effluvia of the long dead found in the hydrologic column of Calvary with the exotic chemistries of Newtown Creek? Who can guess would result?
Whoever the Sweeneys were, their family plot is located in a fairly exclusive area of the 19th century’s ex-population, and pretty close to the top of a hill. What’s odd here, and remarkable, is the enigmatic knots of this token affixed to the Sweeney monument- a trinket which had obviously weathered more than one change of season.
Unknowable implications are suggested by the urgency of this arcane reference found in the New York State Cemetery Law.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Symbolic gifts to the dead and the placement of totemic representations at graves are expected behaviors, when confronted with the brutal truth of mortality, from individuals who experience the death of a family or peer group member. Every cemetery in the area, the sheer acreage of which -in this case- can be observed from space, has posted regulations on appropriate and allowed markers and monuments. Certain obtuse expressions of grief are disallowed due to the necessary maintenance and landscaping of the grounds, and good taste is enforced.
Another odd set of provisions is found in the Penal Law section of the aforementioned codification of New York’s cemeteries.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Noticing that that the oddly complex knotting of the cord implied commonality with the nearby red and blue knotted cords, I decided to have a closer look. There was a second color of cordage in the knots, a dirty and weathered yellow which was only present in one spot. The pendulum which the arrangement supported was either cheap electroplated metal or some sort of ruggose plastic. It was a sort of cartouche, an amulet shaped in a manner commonly recognized as a heart, suspended by a twisted tendon of oddly knotted string.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Suspicious that this might be something other than innocent, and knowing the predilection of certain groups for the usage of bodily liquids in their rites, your humble narrator used a trusty all in one Leatherman brand tool to examine it further. It is important, when walking in the hallowed grounds of Calvary, to try not to touch anything lest something touch you back. Things found there, if they can catch the smell of you, might follow you home and demand to be fed.
Of course, I mean the hundreds of feral cats which stalk Calvary’s hills, and it is best that they stay here where it is always safe for them. Neighborhood gossips- their odd comment phrased with a raised eyebrow and knowing squint- hoarsely whisper the opine: In Calvary Cemetery, no man may kill a cat…
Also from New York State, a manual for the new treasurer, a business plan and model to follow for the mortuary industry’s promise of “Perpetual Care”.
The Newtown Pentacle 