Famous Graves

On my visit to Flushing Cemetery, New York City, I went first to the grave of Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong. It is impossible to miss. Adoring fans have left Mardi Gras beads, hats, coins, a plastic trumpet and photographs of Louis, turning the plot into a small shrine. A short walk away, in Section 31, lies […]

On my visit to New York I went to the most densely packed cemetery I have ever seen, Mount Zion Cemetery in Maspeth, Queens. With my copy of A Ship Without a Sail in hand, I visited the grave of a man who wrote some of the most romantic songs of the twentieth century: Lorenz […]

On my late-morning walk through Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York, I paid a visit to the grave of New York City’s 99th mayor, known to most today by the airport named in his honour: Fiorello La Guardia, “the Little Flower”. The diminutive mayor was born in Greenwich Village in 1882. His father, Achille […]

On my visit to Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, about 30 km from Midtown Manhattan, I visited the grave of the great actor and singer, Tony Randall, best remembered for his iconic role in The Odd Couple as the neat-freak, hypochondriac perfectionist, Felix Unger. Aryeh Leonard Rosenberg was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and was the […]

On my recent trip to New York City, I stayed in Flushing, Queens, and rode my bike to Flushing Cemetery to visit one of the world’s greatest jazz musicians, Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong. Louis was born in New Orleans in 1901, just as jazz was taking shape on the city’s streets. Brass bands, ragtime, blues, church […]

On my drive out of New York City, I stopped at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York, about 40 km north of Manhattan in Westchester County, to visit the grave of the Russian-born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum, known to the world as Ayn Rand. When I arrived, a book was resting on her headstone. I later […]

Every time I visit New York City, including my recent trip in September, I never miss a stop at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, on Fifth Avenue between 50th and 51st Streets in Midtown Manhattan, directly across from Rockefeller Center. Dedicated in 1879, it is the largest Neo-Gothic Catholic cathedral in North America. What many visitors don’t […]

On a walk through Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, I made my way to the Garden Conservatory mausoleum. There, on the face of a bottom-row crypt, rested a single yellow guitar pick, left for the lead guitarist and co-founder of KISS, Ace Frehley. Paul Daniel Frehley was born not far from here, in the Bronx, […]

Tucked into a quiet corner of Queen’s Park at College Street and University Avenue, the Ontario Fallen Fire Fighter Memorial is easy to pass by. On a recent visit, I was fortunate to watch engravers carefully adding this year’s names ahead of the annual memorial ceremony, held the first Sunday in October. The memorial was […]

On a recent visit to Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, Westchester County, about 25 miles north of New York City, I went looking for its most popular spot, Section 25. Section 25 is likely visited more than any other part of the cemetery, thanks to the prominent names buried in and around it. Baseball […]

I’d been told that one of the best views of the Manhattan skyline is from the highest point of New Mount Carmel Cemetery in Queens, near the Brooklyn border. Mount Carmel is a Jewish cemetery that opened in 1906, with more than 85,000 burials across about 100 acres. When I arrived, I walked to what […]

On my visit to St. John Roman Catholic Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens, New York City, I visited the Cloister mausoleum and found the crypt of the “World’s Most Perfectly Developed Man,” Angelo Siciliano, better known as Charles Atlas. Angelo was born in Acri, Calabria, Italy, and emigrated to the United States with his mother […]