Green-Wood Cemetery Open House
Last Saturday Jim and I had tickets to the annual Open House at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. We had been looking for a ghost or cemetery tour to take during October, and when I read that they would be opening the doors to some of the mausoleums and the catacombs I knew that we had found our tour.
The day ended up being so awesome, and Green-Wood is just so magical and beautiful that I went back for Sunday's tour as well. By the end of the weekend I had seen inside 15 mausoleums in addition to every room contained within the catacombs and I couldn't have been happier.
Most of the mausoleums were more ornate on the outside than on the inside, but it was so exciting to actually get to step inside of the iron gates and granite doors that are always closed so tightly. There was a volunteer or two stationed at each mausoleum in period costume, ready to recite the story of the family contained within. We learned about John Anderson, the tobacco shop owner who employed (and was later suspected of murdering) the "beautiful cigar girl," Mary Rogers; John LaFarge, a stained glass maker and Tiffany rival; Valentine Mott the ambidextrous surgeon; Henry Steinway, the original piano man; and Albert Ross Parsons, pianist and Egyptologist (guess which mausoleum is his).
The stories were all so fascinating and uniquely New York, featuring famous families such as the Schermerhorns, Whitneys, Durants and Niblos. There was even one mausoleum designed by Stanford White himself and built using steps from the original New York Public Library (Stewart's, at the beginning of this post).
One of the coolest things about each of the mausoleums was the keys. Most of the ones we saw had their original keys dangling from the door—huge, heavy and incredibly beautiful old keys that are kept in the front office and available to families any time they wish to have access to their respective mausoleums.
I've spent countless hours wandering around cemeteries, standing on my tip toes, trying to peek inside the gates of mausoleums just hoping to catch a glimpse inside. I never imagined that I would one day be welcomed and even encouraged to snoop around such iconic tombs. Some of the interiors were in less-than ideal condition, which was kind of sad—a majority of them had water damage, some contained broken bits of statues and headstones and there was even one with a cardboard box sitting in the corner filled with broken pieces of what was once its stained glass window.
The creepiest thing I saw, however, was the marker on a wall inside of the catacombs that had tiny little handprints all over it. While I realize that they are probably raccoon pawprints, it was still super weird to see them and made me wonder how the critter(s) managed to get inside the sealed doors (maybe they were on the tour?) and why they were only on Henry C. Hadley's marker and not anywhere else within the catacombs?
It was a wonderful kick-off to October and all of its impending fall delights. This is my favorite month and time of year (if that wasn't already obvious) and I'm so excited that, at least for a little while, it will be perfectly acceptable to take cemetery tours, talk about dead things and wear my skull-and-crossbones socks.