Colma Cemeteries and Points Beyond

California in the Spring of 2008, I spent some time shooting the cemeteries of Colma (a southern suburb of San Francisco). Yes, I know − normal people would visit Fisherman’s Wharf or the Golden Gate, but Colma is a wonderful place if you do cemetery photography. I made it a point to shoot at the edges of the day, since that’s when you get the best shadows, the best depth effect for black and white images. The first day I shot in the afternoon, the second in the morning.

Colma is a city of cemeteries − San Fran’s official cemetery, in fact − truly a city of the dead. Unlike New Orleans, Colma’s dead population outnumbers its living by a thousand to one! Within the town’s two square miles are 18 cemeteries  − 17 for humans and one for pets. The city’s live population consists of about 1500 people (2010 census) while its dead number 1.5 million.  Certain notables are buried here, including William Randolph Hearst, Wyatt Earp, Vince Guaraldi, and Joe DiMaggio. However, what really interested me in Colma was the Poole monument at Cypress Lawn Cemetery (Jennie Roosevelt Poole was a cousin of president Theodore Roosevelt.). This weeping angel (above) captured my interest ten years before when I first saw a photo of it in Doug Keister’s book, Going Out in Style. Its beauty enthralled me, and as I would be in the area, I had to see it in person.

Though I visited several cemeteries in Colma during my two-day stay, my sights were set primarily on the Poole monument. The statue itself did not disappoint, though it was difficult to photograph. This beautiful white marble sculpture is on a hill of sorts, and I could have used a stepladder to get a better angle. Also, the first day I was there, the weather was a bit dismal and there were sprinklers on near the statue! That’s a drawback with these lovely well-maintained garden cemeteries. The first day I also photographed in nearby Hoy Sun Ning Yung Cemetery and The Italian Cemetery. I planned my return the next morning in an attempt to photograph the Poole angel, sans sprinklers. (You don’t think Ansel Adams got that shot of Half Moon Dome on his first visit to Yosemite, do you?)

That first day, I found the Italian Cemetery to be a marvelous place, full of wonderfully detailed monuments. It’s really your best bet for close-up work, like this image at left. The following day, I spent many hours at Cypress Lawn and Holy Cross Cemeteries, Colma’s two largest. They’re essentially across the street from each other − or rather, across the El Camino Real. Everything around here is so steeped in history, it gives you a feeling of limitless creativity. As writer Christopher Buckley says about California, “You can be anything you want to there as long as you don’t mind being stuck in traffic.”

Cypress Lawn Cemetery, Colma, CA

Holy Cross Angel

Now, you wouldn’t think two square miles of cemeteries is a lot of ground to cover. However, after two half-days, I was only able to visit the few I mentioned. In addition to the Poole monument, Cypress Lawn is as close as you’ll get to an east coast Victorian garden cemetery, with its grand sweeping vistas, large monuments, ornate mausoleums, and a columbarium that left me utterly speechless. Holy Cross, the first of Colma’s cemeteries (1887), was the initial recipient of the mass exodus of dead San Franciscans when that city decided to move all its cemeteries outside the city limits. Holy Cross features a Googie-inspired receiving chapel (which must be seen to be believed) and a community mausoleum that was featured in a the 1971 cult movie classic, Harold and Maude.  Surrounding these imposing structures are 300 acres of densely packed religious iconography − so many angels that, as Mark Twain would say, you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting one.

And speaking of Twain, back in 1850 when he worked as a reporter for Nevada’s Territorial Enterprise newspaper, he levied this strong opinion about San Francisco cemeteries:

"A prominent firm of undertakers here own largely in Lone Mountain Cemetery and also in the toll-road leading to it. Now if you or I owned that toll-road we would be satisfied with the revenue from a long funeral procession and would "throw in" the corpse--we would let him pass free of toll − we would wink placidly at the gate-keeper and say, "Nevermind this gentleman in the hearse − this fellow's a dead-head." But the firm I am speaking of never do that--if a corpse starts to Paradise or perdition by their road he has got to pay his toll or else switch off and take some other route. And it is rare to see the pride this firm take in the popularity and respectability of their cemetery, and the interest and even enthusiasm which they display in their business." − Mark Twain (www.notfrisco.com)

As a result of the Gold Rush of 1849, many saw California as the land of opportunity and flocked to Sacramento and San Francisco. By the late 1800s, the latter was becoming so developed that its government leaders decided the land was too valuable to be wasted on the dead:

"...eviction notices were sent out to all cemeteries to remove their bodies and monuments. Colma then inherited hundreds of thousands of bodies. Many went into mass graves as there were no relatives to pay the $10.00 for removal."  (www.colmahistory.org)

San Fransisco's cemeteries were closed, with a parade of hundreds of thousands of bodies headed for Colma. Colma became San Fransisco’s official burial space and in 1900, the City and County of San Francisco passed an ordinance that there were to be no more burials allowed in San Francisco. Although the monuments and tombstones from the original cemeteries were dumped in San Francisco Bay, the angels did not totally disappear − I found this one painted on a wall in Haight-Ashbury.

Poole Angel (double exposure)

Back to my photographic travels. My second day plan was to do a morning shoot in Holy Cross and Cypress Lawn (hopefully capturing the Poole Angel without the sprinkler) then a departure for other photographic pursuits. I did mange to get some reasonable images of the Poole Angel that day, although Keister did it better. (In emulating the masters, we learn from them.) Afterward, I wanted to head south to Carmel and Point Lobos, near Big Sur, to shoot not stone angels, but another kind of stone on the rocky coast. Before I became interested in shooting cemetery statuary, I was a nature photographer. In this prior life, I loved shooting landscapes and such, but when I moved from upstate New York to Philadelphia, I found the latter to be totally devoid of nature! I was photographically stalled for years. All that said, it wasn’t necessarily the California landscape that drew me, but rather the aura of Edward Weston.

Santa Cruz Roadside

Carmel, California is about 130 miles south of San Fran, which I allowed 3 hours to reach. Unfortunately, that was barely adequate, given the traffic through Santa Cruz. The scenery was breathtaking, even at high speed − the landscape had the true coloration of an Edward Hopper painting. By the time I blasted through Monterey, it was late in the day.  Some other time, Seventeen Mile Drive − I needed to check in at the Weston Gallery before hitting the beach, Weston Beach, that is − black rocks, movie stars. Weston Beach, as they now call it, is at Point Lobos State Reserve, a couple miles south of Carmel, just above Big Sur.

Edward Weston, one of my photographer idols, lived and photographed in Carmel in the 1930s.  He kind of lived life in the fast lane, but then most great artists are a bit eccentric. (I’ll bet not many people know that one of the medium’s heavyweights, Robert Frank, was the photographer and filmmaker of the Rolling Stones’ most famous unreleased film, Cocksucker Blues.) The Weston Gallery is actually run by Weston’s family. So a visit to the gallery is sort of like vicariously spending time with Weston himself. (As an aside, one of the items in which I take greatest pride is my rejection letter from the Weston Gallery, from when I sent them some of my cemetery photography back in the early 1990s.)

Carmel-by-the-Sea could never be confused with North Jersey’s Avon-by-the-Sea (tho I love them both dearly) − it’s more like Aspen, Colorado, a high-end retail resort. But you can ignore all that and enjoy the Weston Gallery, the pearl of the town. The gentleman running the gallery was very friendly, despite the fact that he knew I wasn’t going to plunk down ten grand for a Weston print. When I eventually told him I was headed for Point Lobos, he said, “You’d better hurry, fog’s going to be rolling in soon.” Panic. Run. Drive fast. Bear in mind last visit to CA when you almost pancaked the rental T-Bird into stalled traffic on the PCH. 

One of Weston’s passions was photographing the stones at a particular beach at Point Lobos. Sounds absurd, but then, you never saw such stones. I’d seen the photos, and was intrigued, but I was totally unprepared for what this place looks like in real life. It’s like another planet. I’m not sure such rock formations exist anywhere else on earth. And it all looks so fragile, weirdly eroded smooth rock held together by sandy grit. How could this all not just wash away? (See Weston Gallery Website for examples.)

Weston Beach, Point Lobos

Weston Beach is within Point Lobos State Reserve. A couple miles south of Carmel, you come upon the park entrance. You drive maybe a mile through the woods to the Pacific, where you can get out and walk around. I got there toward the end of the day, and the air was misty. I shot some digital images, but felt that was a bit sacrilegious. The light was too dim to use my Holga, so I shot a roll of 35mm slide film. I walked around for about two hours, photographing here and there, mostly taking in the ambiance of the place. As the light faded, I thought about Weston shooting at the edges of the day. I was torn between spending this last hour of daylight either soaking it all in, or trying to capture it in photographs.

Toward the end, I felt a bit of what Weston must have felt every day he was there, when the light faded to the point where you could no longer photograph. I think it was the closest thing to a religious experience I’ve ever had in my life, feeling as he must have felt amidst this stunning natural beauty. You want to make hundreds of photographs of the rocks, try to capture the limitless abstract shapes and details. But then heaven’s curtain begins to close on you. I wonder if Weston ever felt he truly captured the images for which he strived so hard?  I think it’s a bit like the feeling I had of not getting the perfect shot of the Poole Angel. So close to elation, but never attaining it − like searching for the Grail.  As the fog slowly enveloped everything, it was time to release the doves and go home.

Ed at Weston Beach

Further Reading:

Colma History.Org
Bella Morte Website, truly wonderful firsthand walk-thru accounts of each of Colma's cemeteries
Video, Nancy and Michael Visit Colma, City of Cemeteries
Robert Frank NPR story, "The Americans - The Book that Changed Photography"
Cypress Lawn Cemetery
Weston Gallery Website

No One Hears an Abandoned Cemetery Scream

 

"Show me your cemeteries and I will tell you what kind of people you have." - Benjamin Franklin

As the final vestige of winter melts away, I see there’s not much left of the pigeon carcass on the roof outside my window. I’m awake, much too early again, staring out bleary-eyed at the clam-gray sky, drinking coffee and praying that the headache is just the result of too much blood in my caffeine system. 

So on this dreary morning in March, I’m thinking the conditions are right for a photographic outing to some bleak graveyard. Except, I’m too lazy, so I think I’ll just write about one. If I had dragged myself out to see the zombie movie being filmed at Laurel Hill Cemetery last night, I might have had some better background for a story, but I was unwell. Felt like I had a freight train running through my brain, dragging Richard Simmons. No matter − as I keep looking out at the rain washing away the bloody pigeon remnants, I think about the hawk or falcon that gored it the day before. Viewing the aftermath reminds me of visiting Mt. Moriah Cemetery here in Philadelphia. Not because of the pile of dead foxes some friends of mine found there recently (certainly an example of unnatural selection), but because of the desecrated gravestones and nefarious acts that go on there. You would think such things are enough to keep most people away. But then, I’m not most people.

Chased by Dogs

Standing atop one of the higher hills at Mt. Moriah the other day, I witnessed a stand-off between two people and the graveyard's resident pack of wild dogs. The human interlopers were cutting their way through the cemetery, probably on their way home from work. I was scrambling through the weeds trying to photograph a nineteenth century red granite dynasty plot, when I heard the barking. When you’re in this place, the barking always startles you. I saw the couple walking toward a bend in the grassy swath of road, and the pack of dogs around the bend. Neither party could see the other − I had sort of an aerial view. The four dogs came slowly around the corner and faced the people, barking the whole time. Our turf, folks. The couple backed away down the road and the dogs didn’t follow. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. 

The many empty monument pedestals in this godforsaken place make me think that unless their wings are broken or bound, the stone angels have gone. Even the dead leave, not wanting to witness further degradation. Betsy Ross used to be a resident, but she and her husband were dug up 35 years ago and moved to safer digs. Why risk walking through this place? For me, my curiosity is stronger than my fear − but I do always carry an ice hook or baseball bat.  

My initial interest in cemetery photography began with angels, though I was cosseted by the well-kept Victorian garden cemeteries.  Even in these pristine sculpture gardens, I always preferred the worn down broken angels to the crisp, clean, and pretty. Maybe it’s natural, then, that my interest slowly devolved to the abandoned cemetery − a Diane Arbus-like attraction to the seedier side of human existence. A vandalized and broken cemetery is a horrible sight, but like an auto accident, it’s hard to look away. The photographs I take here, backlit by a lost beauty one can only imagine, challenge the notion of the well-preserved garden cemetery, an ideal that goes hand-in-hand with money, altruism, and a desire to preserve the past. I like to think that my confrontational images mirror ourselves and how much MOST of us really care about our own history. Like Arbus’ photographs, my images of Mt. Moriah take the viewer back to the pre-Victorian era when cemeteries were scary places, a tangible embodiment of our terrors and fears. 

Mausoleum Roofs in Background

From my earliest visits to more recent ones, every encounter has been shocking in its own way. In the late 1990s, I would go to Mt. Moriah to be alone with my guitar while my marriage fell apart. In 2011, it’s no longer a quaint overgrown cemetery, but rather a wilderness grown among the tombstones, monuments, and trash. I've witnessed the devolution of this place first-hand, but trying to capture it in a photograph is challenging − like trying to take a picture of the Grand Canyon.  As you slash your way through the kudzu and buckthorn, with prickly vines ripping at your clothes, tearing through your socks, jeans, and flesh, it hits you that this is not the idyllic walk in the park that the Victorian cemetery planners envisioned. As you navigate your way around dumped building materials, old mattresses, piles of animal bones, and the occasional boom box (which makes you wonder where its homeless owner is right now…), you think of it more as a set for a George Romero zombie movie. (Why didn’t they film that movie here, instead of at Laurel Hill last night? Maybe they wanted a more controlled setting − you wouldn’t necessarily want the actors attacked by wild dogs − or maybe you would?) 

If you’re into zombie movies, you might want to play this in the background, as you continue to read:  JOHNNY CASH's "The Man Comes Around"

The Ironclad "Monitor" Memorial

The cemetery’s founding document (researched by my friend Grace Carthey) states that at Mt. Moriah Cemetery, the city's dead shall rest in undisturbed peace. She points out that the cemetery’s 80,000 residents are resting in undisturbed peace, along with VERY undisturbed foliage and trash. Referring to the magnificently decaying monuments, memorials, and other historic artifacts, she says, “I doubt an indoor museum would be allowed to fall into this kind of condition, so why does an outdoor one so languish?” 

Mt. Moriah is now officially defunct. It's no longer a partly functional, but mostly unmaintained 400-acre Victorian cemetery − it has officially been abandoned (400 acres, by the way, would be about a mile across, if it were a square piece of land). According to FOX NEWS (April 7, 2011), the message on the cemetery’s answering machine says:   

"The Mount Moriah Cemetery is now closed for business, effective immediately. Mount Moriah Cemetery is no longer accepting any orders. This includes for funerals or burials of any kind. No further information is available at this time."   (Read the entire article Here.)

No one really knows who owns this place. I heard a rumor recently that the folks who would take your money and allow you to bury a body, took off, keeping the mystery of Mt. Moriah as dark as ever. Which may explain the police cars I saw slowly cruising through it the other day. So legal burials have ceased. You wonder why a family would bury a loved one here anyway? It was probably inexpensive, though recent customers appear quite unhappy. Just have a look at this related link to one of the forums on FindAGrave.com.

Rear of Gatehouse

There is, or was, sort of a maintained section of the cemetery, the part you can see along Kingsessing Avenue, where new burials have occurred. Stones are set in a haphazard fashion, if at all. Some graves are simply outlined with stones.  According to Grace Carthey, there is an account of one woman who's had family members buried here in recent years where the keepers charged her hundreds of dollars to set her mother's headstone and in spite of that, it ended up set so it was never straight, but mounted on cheap cinder blocks. Also, when this person’s uncle’s urn was buried in a concrete box, they didn’t dig deep enough and so you could still see the top of it through the grass. Maybe this is the family that’s currently suing the keepers (prompting their disappearance). There are modern headstones sitting around that would never get set unless family members showed up to complain. There is a new-looking one dated 2006, still attached to its carrying strap, behind the crumbling gatehouse facade. 

Mt. Moriah Gatehouse, with Recent Graves

So while legal burials may cease, illegal ones may continue. I mean, if you ever walked through Mt. Moriah, you’d agree there really is no better place to hide the bodies. When my friend Veronika encountered noises in the thicket ahead of her during a solo visit, she split after finding some rope, a shovel, and a bag of lye (lye is used to hasten the disintegration of flesh). Frank and I recently came across a freshly dug hole with cement poured over the top, then leveled off. I do believe there are some very good reasons to be cautious here, which is why I seldom come by myself. When fellow cemetery travelers want to visit, I tell them not to come alone. In an abandoned cemetery, no one hears you scream. If you think I’m being melodramatic, or exaggerating, just watch this video, "Buried Stones, Buried Dreams," on John Ellingsworth‘s Mt. Moriah website (John is not affiliated in any way with the cemetery). Or check out the You Tube video links at the end of this article. Oh, and if you’re brave enough to bear the mortal terrors of this place, consider the paranormal ones − someone posted this comment after one of my older Mt. Moriah blogs:

“Watch out for the crazy white lady who haunts these grounds. If she feels you are there with ill intentions you may not make it back out of the cemetery...at all.

Near the circle of abandoned mausoleums, Frank and I found a Geocache box. The cemetery is so desolate and forbidding, someone must have thought it a great place for a daredevil game. (Geocache adventure seekers use GPS devices to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share their experiences online.) But Mt. Moriah should not be taken lightly. If you’re not afraid of the people who lurk within, you should be afraid of the coyotes, pit bulls, and the turkey vultures that will later pick your bones clean. If this place had a soundtrack, it would be the manic animal noises of a slaughterhouse. That said, it somehow seems safer to me here in winter, with the foliage gone and the trees laid bare. The eviscerated pigeon outside my window reminded me of Mt. Moriah’s resident vultures, roosting in the bare winter trees. I wonder if Eleanor Roosevelt had a visit to this place in mind when she said, "Do one thing every day that scares you."

Car on Tombstone

On the other side of Cobbs Creek Parkway, there’s a burned out car hung up on monuments deep in a thickly wooded area. Not the first I’ve seen here. Obviously someone drove the car deep into the cemetery, along the rutted overgrown dirt roads, rammed it up onto a veterans monument, and torched it. Such a sight makes you think that even with Herculean effort, this cemetery is way beyond the point of salvage, let alone restoration. Would the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs be interested is helping the situation? It seems that the Freemasons are not, though Mt. Moriah cemetery was essentially created for them in 1855 (associating with the Masonic order, the cemetery profited from “bulk” plot sales). The Masonic centerpiece here in the Circle of Saint John is the magnificently tall marble monument to the Order's Grand Tyler, William B. Schnider, who died in 1867.  Mount Moriah, being the mountain on which King Solomon’s temple was built in Jerusalem, is integral to Masonic allegory. 

It’s tempting to steal relics from this place − who would miss a marble angel wing here, a granite urn there? But as Mark Twain said of his trip to the Roman Coliseum, if every visitor took a souvenir, there would eventually be nothing left. Of course, he also more humorously said “It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.” Maybe that would be a good thing, then they could just flatten the place and build a storage facility or supermarket.  

Some cities embrace their past, especially through architecture. Take Boston or Baltimore, for example. Their buildings are restored, their monuments polished. Rent the last Rocky movie (Rocky Balboa) and compare the upkeep of those cities to Philadelphia’s dilapidated neighborhoods. Those aren’t movie sets in the film—it really looks like this. It’s embarrassing. Those bombed-out rowhomes in Rocky Balboa look just like the ones that line Cemetery Road (its real name), the perfectly joyless winding street that runs down the Cobbs Creek side of Mt. Moriah. 

Mt. Moriah is like the city it’s a part of. To paraphrase novelist Willard Manus (from his book, Mott the Hoople), the city is "like a big mongrel dog, all sad-eyed and scruffy and smelly, but likable and human. Cities can’t conceal what they are − its all out in the open, all the ugliness…smacks you in the face like a fist.” Is the beauty and tranquility of a well-maintained Victorian garden cemetery “nothing more than a mask,” as Manus might say, a mask that hides the death and corruption of life?  Nothing, he says, “is truly beautiful which masks the real face of our time.” And Mt. Moriah, it seems, is the real face of Philadelphia.



Further Reading:

Thanks to my Facebook Friends for ideas for this article:

John Thomas Grant for the great Ben Franklin quote at the beginning and Grace Carthey for her Web-based research on Mt. Moriah.

Video  "Buried Stones, Buried Dreams," on John Ellingsworth‘s Mt. Moriah website

FoxNews: Historic Cemetery in Philadelphia Shuts Down, Leaving Families With No Answers
You Tube videos taken at Mt. Moriah Cemetery
FindAGrave.com link to Mt. Moriah customers looking for answers

Locked In and Climbing Out

When it comes to blood-chilling fear, being locked in a cemetery isn’t quite on par with public speaking, but its close. Still, I’d guess most people would opt not to be locked in a cemetery, given the choice. In my cemetery roamings, I’ve been locked in a few times. And believe me, it’s not something you get used to.

The main reason I now pay close attention to closing times is because of an adventure my brother and I had at Woodlawn Cemetery in the North Bronx, NYC. This was maybe in the summer of 2002, as far as I can recall, and my first time being locked in. I had convinced him to take the train with me from Philadelphia to the Bronx to go shooting in this grand old Victorian cemetery called Woodlawn. It’s all the way at the north end of a subway/elevated line at the Woodlawn stop, a pretty rough neighborhood. Worth the effort, though, as it is certainly one of the most elaborate and picturesque cemeteries in the country. Back then, it was my own precious discovery.

This being my first time at Woodlawn, I mistook the cemetery’s rear gate on Jerome Avenue for the main gate, (which is actually on Webster Avenue and East 233rd Street, clear on the opposite side of this huge 400-acre cemetery). The Jerome Avenue gate and wrought iron fencing were about 10 feet high. My brother made special note of that, and commented on the 4:30 closing time (he's such a worrywart).

We spent hours being awestruck by the amazing statues and mausoleums, especially the angels. One of the most fabulous memorials I have ever seen is the defeated Woodlawn angel shown in the image just below. (Years later a woman saw it in one of my shows and said, "It's so sad even the angels are crying.") I shot most of a roll of film of this singular statue, from various angles, bracketing exposures, and having my brother hold tree branches out of my way. I needed to get this down; the North Bronx is too far from home for a return trip.

As it turns out, the image you see here was actually taken on a second trip some months later, as my film developer messed up that entire roll of film−it came out severely overexposed (couldn’t have been MY fault, right?). All the other film I shot that day was fine, it was just this one roll, for some reason! (You can read more about my creepily eventful return trip in a previous Cemetery Traveler blog posting, “Voices in the Cemetery.”)

Detail of Belmont Mausoleum

So my brother and I spent about four hours at Woodlawn photographing the magnificent statuary and toward the end of the day, we began to make our way back toward the gate. Not far from the exit, I had my head turned by the magnificent Belmont mausoleum. The Belmont mausoleum (shown on the cover of the book, Woodlawn Remembers) is a full-scale replica of the Chapel of St. Hubert in France’s famed Loire valley (where the best wine comes from, I might add). It was designed by Leonardo Da Vinci in the “Gothic Flamboyant” style in the early 1500s. Da Vinci’s remains were placed in a sarcophagus in this original chapel. So this ain’t no ordinary mausoleum. Who could afford something like this? Or go to such a design extreme (see link below for more photos)? Its residents, Oliver and Alva Belmont, certainly had the money. Oliver Belmont was a millionaire (the oldest horserace in the Triple Crown, the Belmont Stakes, is named for August Belmont, his father), and his wife Alva had enormous personal wealth as well, having previously married into the Vanderbilt family.

After we exhausted our film on the gargoyles and flying buttresses (I don’t really know what those are but I always wanted to say it), we realized it was 4:45! Aahhhh! To the gate!...... What?! CLOSED!!!

After some howls and imprecations on my brother’s part (directed mainly toward me), I took the predicament into consideration and figured it was possible to climb up the gate and down the other side. With my camera bag on my shoulder, I scaled up the inside of the gate, thankful for the built-in footholds of ornamental wrought iron, over the top and down the front. Getting Tim over the gate was quite another story−my poor brother had such a horrendous time! He cursed me coast to coast during both his ascent and descent. At one point, he was sitting on top of the closed gate with me outside trying to convince him that a safe dismount was indeed possible. I was conscious of cars on the highway slowing down to look at us, with the drivers probably thinking, “Why are they trying to get out? In this neighborhood, it’s certainly safer inside that cemetery!” But we got him out, with me jamming his feet into footholds he couldn’t see. Took about a half hour in the hot setting summer sun. To cool him down (in more ways than one) I bought him a few beers at the biker bar under the el stop across the street. Then we took the long series of train rides home.

Had we known there was a front entrance, we certainly would have tried to get to it to see if there were any live people about (I found out later that the main entrance was literally one mile away through the center of the cemetery, its that big!). As an aside, I came to find out even later that the gate we climbed over used to be quite famous. The Jerome Avenue gate of Woodlawn Cemetery was the site of a clandestine meeting related to the “Crime of the Century,” the supposed kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby in 1932. One evening, a police officer reported seeing a man sitting on top of the closed gate talking with someone on the sidewalk outside the gate. These men were believed to be Charles Lindbergh’s agent (Dr. John Condon) and the kidnapper/extortionist. For more on this, please see the link below.

Epilogue - The Return Trip

Since none of my images of the Weeping Angel came out, I was determined to have another go at it. I was on a mission--as the banner over Alva Belmont's crypt says,  'Failure is Impossible'. So I planned a solo trip a few months later. I knew when the sun would be illuminating that part of the cemetery and figured I needed to be in there after 4:30 pm (obviously after the gates were closed). I would wander around Woodlawn for a couple hours, allow myself to be locked in, spend as much time as I needed to make the photographs, then climb out. So my second experience being locked in a cemetery was elective. During the planning stage, a woman I know suggested we go together, take mushrooms, and spend the night in the cemetery. While the idea of crawling around licking tombstones didn’t appeal to me much, can you imagine having a bad trip in a cemetery?! I think I’d rather eat bees. So I went solo. Click the link here for my account of that eventful experience, “Voices in the Cemetery.”)

Further Reading:

PHOTOGRAPHING AT WOODLAWN CEMETERY

During my third visit to Woodlawn a year or so later, my friend Krista and I actually found the front entrance with the offices and gatehouse, on Webster Avenue and East 233rd Street. We signed in as official visitors (so unlike me), and were told that if we wanted to take photographs, we had to apply for a permit, and pay some nominal fee (it might have been $5 or $10), which we did. Curiously, they also told us we were not allowed to photograph any of the bronze sculptures! These rules may have changed in the past ten years, but the “Photography Permit Application” (which you’re supposed to submit in advance of your visit) is still on Woodlawn’s website.

Woodlawn Photography Permit Application
Woodlawn Cemetery Website
Woodlawn Cemetery Image Gallery
Lindbergh Kidnapping

Woodlawn Cemetery

Photographing Mausoleum Stained Glass

Photographing mausoleum stained glass windows is easier than photographing stained glass in say, a church, simply because with a mausoleum, you’re at eye level with your subject! That said, there are certain devices and techniques that will make your task easier. Also, the cheaper version of stained glass, painted glass, photographs the same way.

Lighting
You might think that since the inside of a mausoleum is dark, you would need to shoot at a high ISO. Not so. This is one of the few situations where your intention is to shoot directly into the sun, with the stained glass window between it and you. To the photographer’s benefit, cemetery planners and mausoleum designers purposely situate mausoleums facing east or west. That way, the sun illuminates the stained glass window either when it rises or sets--except of course in the southern hemisphere, where it rises and sets north to south*(see footnote below for more on this).

Typically, in your average sized mausoleum, you have one big stained glass window opposite the mausoleum door (which you typically can’t open, in case you were wondering). Your best lighting conditions are when the sun is low on the horizon (either morning or late afternoon) and shining directly onto the stained glass. Then you can photograph it through the front door. If you can’t be there at the edges of the day, a bright cloudless day with crisp, even light works okay too.

ISO
Now, about taking the actual photographs. Since your subject is bright, you don’t really have to worry about shooting at a high ISO. The inside of the mausoleum will be so dim compared to the stained glass, you don’t have to worry about including distracting detail in your image—these details will be so dark your image sensor won’t even pick them up. If you have a lot of bright areas in the glass, you can easily shoot at ISO 200. If the glass has a lot of darker areas, you may have to shoot at ISO 400. Remember though, that you’re shooting a flat pane of glass so you don’t need ANY depth of field! You can shoot wide open (maybe f5.6 with your average digital point-and-shoot, f3.8 with a DSLR) and enjoy a relatively fast shutter speed, perhaps 1/30 second.

The Unobstructed View

Okay, you really don’t have one of those, in most cases. One of the minor challenges of photographing mausoleum stained glass windows is that the entry door opposite the window is typically partially obstructs your view. Whether for security** or ornamental reasons, these clear-glass paned doors are usually covered with very intricate bronze or iron design elements. (The door glass, though clear, is usually dirty, cracked, or covered with cobwebs, adding to the challenge).The gridded metalwork allows a view of the stained glass, but the spaces between the design elements are seldom more than two inches in rough diameter. What this means, of course, is that you can’t put your 62mm (filter size) DSLR lens right up to the door glass and shoot. In other words, the diameter of the lens barrel is too wide. When push comes to shove, I’ll shoot anyway, then crop blurred obstruction out of the photograph, if possible.

Camera Type

Front lit door

Now, for almost any other photographic purpose, I would recommend using a DSLR rather than a DPS (Digital Point-and-Shoot) camera, because a DSLR produces far better image quality (regardless of megapixel count). However, since the lens barrel diameter of most DPS cameras is far smaller than the diameter of a DSLR lens, the DPS lens fits more easily between the ornamental bronze and ironwork ornately artistic metalwork designs on most mausoleum doors! Since you don’t need a high ISO or a super low f-stop, you can do a lot of good work with the DPS camera.  DPS zooms are usually longer than those of a DPS lens, so this can be very helpful with composing and isolating sections of the stained glass.

Megapixel Count and Camera Type

I mentioned megapixel count in the previous paragraph, and I’d like to clarify that a bit. Because the image sensors of DPS cameras are smaller than those in DSLRs, the image quality of a DPS camera is ALWAYS inferior to a DSLR for the same MP (megapixel) count. In fact, since the pixels themselves are larger in a DSLR sensor, they hold more information and are more sensitive to light (that’s why DSLRs are capable of such higher ISOs than are DPS cameras, for example, ISO 1600 for the former, ISO 400 for the latter). Your print resolution is much better with the DSLR as well, allowing you to make bigger enlargements. One of my pet peeves is salespeople telling you that you need, oh, let’s say 12MP to make a fine 11x14 enlargement. Bullfeathers. An 11x14 enlargement from a 2MP DSLR might be far superior to a 12MP enlargement from a DPS camera! I go on and on about this in my book, Digital Photography for the Impatient, so if you’d care to read more, check out Chapter 4, “Magical Devices for a High Speed World.”

Get Creative!

If lighting conditions aren't exactly right or you can't really get the angle you'd like, be creative. Just shoot the door itself, or experiment with reflections (as I did in this self-portrait). If you can't photograph the intended pictorial elements of the glass, consider that simple patterns are sometimes worthy subjects in themselves (the image at left reminds me of a Mondrian painting). Bear in mind that even small mausoleums can have really nice stained glass, so don't pass up the opportunity of checking them out. In conclusion, since many cemeteries line up their mausoleums in one area, and usually in a row, its relatively easy to shoot half a dozen mausoleums in a short period of time. It’s an efficient process, so get out there and start shooting!

 Further Reading

* Just kidding about the southern hemisphere, wanted to see if you were paying attention. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west no matter where you live on Earth, because we all see the same sky.

* * Security issues? Why would anyone want to break into a mausoleum? Aside from the potential thrill of forbidden sex or some black arts ritual (neither of which is legal, mausoleums being private property), there exists the possibility of theft and vandalism. Thieves may think that if the deceased was affluent enough to buy an expensive mausoleum, the bodies inside may have been buried with valuables. And in some cases, they might be right. People have also been known to steal each others bones (see links below). In reality, the objects of most actual value in a mausoleum are the bronze entry door and the stained glass window, as you can see in the following links (my favorite of which is, "Metal Bandits Raid Queens Cemetery" -- sounds like a rock video, doesn't it? Speaking of music, click on the Buckethead link below to hear their song, "Mausoleum Door"). Tiffany stained glass windows bring hundreds of thousands of dollars on the black market and with the price of scrap metal rising, bronze has become an increasingly valuable target for thieves. Ever notice a mausoleum where a cinder block wall has been placed in the opening of the door or windows? Most likely the result of vandalism or theft.

Expert Charged in Sale of Tiffany Glass Stolen From Tomb
Faux Tiffany Windows Are Stolen From Tomb (now THAT’s pretty funny!)
Cemetery Vandalism blog posting on The Cemetery Traveler
Interview excerpt on mausoleum stained glass from Ed Snyder’s StoneAngels website 
Precious heirloom stolen from mausoleum adds to family's pain
Cops: Brazen Thieves Came Prepared, Ransacked 3 Mausoleums
Couple at peace again after mausoleum fixed
Deer Park funeral home will donate a new coffin and liner to the family of a woman whose family is seeking return of her stolen remains
Metal bandits raid Queens cemetery
Russell-Cotes mausoleum doors stolen in Bornemouth
Tiffany stained glass  

Click here to listen to the song, "Mausoleum Door" by Buckethead

Abandoned No More - The Knights of Pythias Cemetery

The Knights of Pythias Greeenwood Cemetery is an unusual gem of a place located in the Northwood section of Philadelphia. It has until recently been shrouded in mystery, not to mention an overgrown forest. I was surprised to see it referred to as “abandoned” on the Internet, since I thought for sure there were active burials occurring there. So I needed to make a road trip to see for myself (which really only amounts to a half hour drive from my house).

Upon my arrival on a wintry crisp Saturday afternoon, I found the place closed (front gates locked). However, the front left side of the cemetery was open as it bordered the driveways of some houses. So I could get in without scaling a wall—always a good thing. As far as I could see, the cemetery was well-maintained and orderly, with a big old house in the middle of the grounds, which appeared to be the office. No one about, so I went walking around. What struck me as being extremely odd were the piles of tombstones along the left front border of the cemetery, near the homes where I had entered. These scores of headstones, each with a pink ribbon tied around it, ranged in date from the late 1800s to the mid 1900s. I assumed they had been gathered from the grounds of the cemetery, but why? Curious. Looking out over the densely populated (with grave markers and monuments) grounds, it didn’t appear that any stones were missing. Where did they come from?

I went walking through the cemetery and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw a grassy hillock with a receiving vault built into it. Not too unusual a sight except for one thing—this was the SAME receiving vault I photographed back around 2004 when I was just starting my cemetery exploration endeavors. (I refer to this initial visit in my blog posting “Freddie Krueger,” an experience that was truly a Nightmare on Adams Avenue.) It would be hard to mistake this receiving vault for some other one, as it had this strange coat of arms on its front.  (the weird colored infrared photo at top was taken in 2004). The Coat of Arms is that of the Knights of Pythias, a fraternal organization that became associated with Greenwood Cemetery soon after its inception in 1869. As befitting any association of its kind (e.g. Masons or Odd Fellows), the Pythians acquired graves within the cemetery for use by its members.

In 2004, while making the infrared photograph of the vault, I was accosted by a bib-overall-clad, pitchfork wielding character who kept demanding of me, “Are you with us, or against us?” The outcome of that tense and prolonged interrogation was that his company had just purchased the (at that time, truly overgrown and seemingly abandoned) cemetery and was facing stiff opposition from the local community. Why, you might wonder? Do Philadelphians prefer their cemeteries abandoned, desecrated, and overgrown? Certainly there are enough of these around to make one believe that (see links at end). 

Why would there be opposition to anyone taking over an abandoned cemetery? I mean, along with the pitchfork guy, other workers appeared to be chopping out the trees and cutting weeds, essentially cleaning the place up. Is that a bad thing? Before we get into that, why would anyone BUY a cemetery in the first place? How is that even allowed?! Does ownership entitle you to any gold, silver, antiquities, gems, or jewelry buried with the bodies? Do you own the bodies themselves? I know a fellow whose den floor is inlaid with dozens of white marble headstones. Decades before he bought the (18th century) house, a prior owner had collected the symmetrical and uniformly-sized stones from an abandoned nuns’ cemetery that was situated behind a closed-down convent. Is that right? Would anyone care if you collected all the headstones from an old, out-of-use graveyard and used the stones for a walkway in your garden? (Someone actually kind of did this at Johnson Cemetery “Park,” in Camden, New Jersey, as described in another of my blogs, “Abandoned Cemetery … or just Repurposed?”)

After my confrontation with the lunatic farmhand in 2004, he eventually told me that his company had purchased Greenwood Cemetery and was planning to build a crematorium on the site. Apparently, there’s money in that (for instance, crematories will contract with the city morgue to cremate the bodies of unidentified/unclaimed bodies). The locals were not amused. So now, seven years on, it appears that the crematorium has not been built, but the cemetery appears to be entrenched in a restoration project. This is likely the reason behind the piles of pink ribbon-tied headstones bordering the cemetery—they must be marked in some way for future placement. The receiving vault was shored up with timbers and was undergoing some sort of makeover, while the old house in the middle of the grounds had been completely restored.

About half of Greenwood’s 44 acres has had its wild trees cut back or pulled out, grass is cropped close, and there isn’t a weed to be seen. The monuments and gravestones in this front half of the cemetery looked to be in fine shape. The back twenty (acres) are still a forest grown around the monuments, however--an odd inner city wood bordered on one side by rowhomes, another by a corporate complex, and the other two by busy avenues. As I made my way through the thicket during another winter visit, I was startled to see a twenty foot high vibrant green glade of bamboo crowding out a fifty foot square section of headstones! The bamboo stalks were so close together, you couldn’t walk through. On seeing the intricately carved yet broken marble coping surrounding forgotten family plots (above right), you half expect to come upon Jude Hawley making repairs. Hawley is the enigmatic stonecarver character in Thomas Hardy’s darkest novel, Jude the Obscure. (This beautifully written book is a covert treatise on flawed Victorian sensibilities.) Like Jude, Greenwood cemetery seems to have suffered the same fate at the hands of a cruel and uncaring world: “…whoever or whatever our foe may be, I am cowed into submission. I have no more fighting or strength left; no more enterprise. I am beaten, beaten! …”

The Knights of Pythias Greeenwood Cemetery had been so badly beaten, in fact, that at one point the Knights themselves attempted to extricate themselves from the enterprise.

So what’s the story with this half-restored Victorian cemetery? Intrigued, I decided to do some investigating. Greenwood had been on my mind for years; it took time, but as Keith Richards says about songwriting, “If you chase a song far enough, you’re gonna corner it.”

REVITALIZATION OF THE CEMETERY

While half the cemetery is still a forest, it appears that it is being slowly restored to some semblance of its original splendor. What had been the decrepit Knights of Pythias Greenwood Cemetery is now a quaint Victorian garden cemetery, with gently rolling slopes and landscaped roadways. Gone are the abandoned cars and rusty household appliances, the headstones are upright and clean. No longer do the Knights seek to remove their name, upset over the declining conditions in the cemetery.

To my amazement, the cemetery now has a website, which describes the transformation in detail. Its a rather odd scenario. The previous owners gave up on the crematorium idea when community opposition proved to be too strong.  After that, they let the cemetery go to pot again until the adjacent business, the Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) Eastern Regional Medical Center, took over, in conjunction with the Friends of Greenwood.  In exchange for taking part of the cemetery grounds to use as a parking lot (!), the Center agreed to relocate 2400 bodies from that section (to other areas of Greenwood), clean up the rest of the cemetery, and restore the old farmhouse on the property. The Knights seem to be happy with this as the official name remains “The Knights of Pythias Greeenwood Cemetery.”

Benjamin Rush Farm House

The house in the center of the cemetery, which dates back to the 1830s, has been restored. During the project, it was renamed “Greenwood Estate at Rush Farm,” as the land on which the cemetery resides had been owned in the 1700s by Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of America’s founding fathers and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Greenwood Cemetery may not look exactly like its original 1869 self, but thanks to the involvement by the CTCA, it is on its way to becoming a viable cemetery again. Restoration continues, with the published intention of the new owners to treat its 20,000 inhabitants and their descendants with due respect and to make the cemetery a safe and picturesque memorial park. Whether for profit or some altruistic reason, this long-ignored Victorian-era resting place is being restored.

In closing, I found this interesting tidbit in the FAQ section on Greenwood's website:
Q: Do the owners intend to try and build a crematorium on the property after it has been revitalized?
A: Absolutely not.

Further Reading:

Friends of Greenwood
Testimonials to the Restoration of Greenwood
FAQ from Kof P Greenwood Website
Fascinating “Burial Relocation Process” at Greenwood (Powerpoint)
Restoration of Benjamin Rush House at Greenwood

Abandoned Cemeteries in the Philadelphia Area:
Knights of Pythias/Greenwood (back when it was abandoned)
Johnson Cemetery (1) (2)
Mount Moriah (1) (2)
Evergreen Cemetery
Mount Peace Cemetery

Knights of Pythias Website
Knights of Pythias video
Pythagoras and the Origin of the Pythians


The Knights of Pythias

The Knights of Pythias organization is associated with Pythagoras, the mathematician (I can feel your body tense as you read this, thinking back on those horrible moments in high school geometry class when you were forced to learn the nuances of the Pythagorean Theorem). But it makes sense, right? Funerary monuments and headstones are all angular and symmetrical, so why not worship the almighty angle? Actually, Pythagoras (582 – 500 BC) is ALSO known as the Father of Greek Philosophy, whose presocratic principles the Knights adopted: "FRIENDSHIP, CHARITY and BENEVOLENCE." (The American Cancer Society, by the way, is the National Charity of the Knights of Pythias, which may be part of the reason the Pythians approved of the purchase of Greenwood by the Cancer Treatment Centers of America.)

According to MetaReligion.com, this Pythagorean Brotherhood was actually the first fraternal Order to be formed by an Act of Congress, at the suggestion of President Abraham Lincoln, in 1864. The Order began during the Civil War, and its founder, Justus H. Rathbone, believed that it might do much to heal the wounds and allay the hatred of civil conflict. (Rathbone had been inspired by a play by the Irish poet John Banim about the legend of Damon and Pythias, students of the Pythagorean school of philosophy). With 2011 being the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, it is most appropriate to quote President Lincoln:

“The purposes of your organization are most wonderful. If we could but bring its spirit to all our citizenry, what a wonderful thing it would be. It breathes the spirit of Friendship, Charity and Benevolence. It is one of the best agencies conceived for the upholding of government, honoring the flag, for the reuniting of our brethren of the North and of the South, for teaching the people to love one another, and portraying the sanctity of the home and loved ones. I would suggest that these great principles by perpetuated and that you go to the Congress of the United States and ask for a charter, and so organize on a great scale throughout this nation, and disseminate this wonderful work that you have so nobly started. I will do all in my power to assist you in this application and with your work."

The suggestion made by the President was adopted. An application was made to Congress for a charter, and the Order of Knights of Pythias was the first American Order ever chartered by an Act of the Congress of the United States.