Cemetery Belt

Houdini’s Grave, in NYC’s Spookiest Cemetery

Are we in Queens or Salem’s Lot?

If you pass by a graveyard on the Jackie Robinson Parkway, don’t hold your breath.  You’ve got two and half miles of Queens’ Cemetery Belt ahead of you, a burial ground so vast it’s supposedly visible from space.   Surrounded on all sides by an ocean of headstones, the modest Machpelah Cemetery makes up only a small fraction of the sprawling necropolis, but its arguably the creepiest graveyard in the city…

Cramped centenarian tombstones muster in rows on the hilly plot—the place is rundown and deserted, but one grave is consistently well-maintained.  It’s the monument of Machpelah’s most famous resident, master escape artist Harry Houdini.  Only steps from the headstone lurks an eerie cemetery office, abandoned since the late 80s.  The cemetery is a dream destination for graveyard ghouls on a chilly October night, especially since Halloween marks the anniversary of Houdini’s untimely death.

The history of the Cemetery Belt can be traced back to the Rural Cemeteries Act of 1847, under which cemeteries became a legitimate commercial enterprise for the first time in New York.  Non-profit organizations were authorized to buy up land and sell plots to individuals, replacing the traditional practice of burying the deceased in churchyards and private property.

Conditions at Bayside-Acacia are still less than ideal.

Areas of then-rural Queens quickly became concentrated with new cemetery holdings.  A stipulation of the act limited the acreage of land an organization could purchase in a given county, but church groups and land speculators got around this by buying up neighboring plots on the Brooklyn-Queens border, forming the region now known as the Cemetery Belt.

Between 1832 and 1849, a series of cholera outbreaks thoroughly exhausted Manhattan’s remaining burial sites.  The common belief at the time was that ground water could become contaminated with the disease when infected corpses were exposed to the soil.  As a result, all burials were prohibited on the island of Manhattan in 1852.

As the population swelled, new developments, including the Brooklyn Bridge, often required the displacement of grave sites.   Manhattan started evicting its dead people, and sending them to western Queens—tens of thousands of deceased were disinterred and transported to mass graves in the Cemetery Belt.  These ghoulish dealings were kept away from the public eye, often carried out in the dead of night.

Today, Queens’ five million “permanent residents” almost triple its living population, but their numbers are at a standstill.  Most of these cemeteries reached capacity long ago, leaving many without a source of income.  As a result, some have fallen into disrepair, with officials failing to provide the “perpetual care” their patrons are rightfully owed.

At the nearby Bayside Cemetery, conditions were downright shameful, and hair-raising—exposed human remains were identified at several of the overgrown grave sites.  Community pressure, litigation, and the effort of volunteers have gotten the place cleaned up, albeit in a cursory fashion.  Gaping mausoleums have been closed off with cinderblocks and boards.

At Machpelah, the plots are untidy, but not nearly as egregious as the Bayside grounds.  The cemetery’s decline is most apparent in its ramshackle office building.  The boarded-up structure is dilapidated now, but its architecture, dating to 1928, continues to impress on the surface.

Burial records litter the floor of the Machpelah Cemetery office.

Any semblance of grandeur breaks down on the inside.  The striking arched windows visible in the facade are installed in rectangular frames, and their diamond panes are all artifice.  The skeleton of a drop ceiling hangs askew, with most panels collapsed and reduced to a yellow paste that covers the ground.  The office has apparently fallen victim to vandals over the years, furniture and safe deposit boxes have been ransacked, old burial records lie scattered in the grime.  Anything of value has been removed, but a coin bank souvenir from the 1939 New York World’s Fair remains, its most recent deposits dating back to 1988.

“Stuffy” doesn’t begin to describe its suffocating ether. Reception rooms are boxed in with cheap wood paneling, which combines with the dizzying funk of mildew to evoke the interior of a coffin.   Secluded in a cockeyed armoire, Nosferatu could feel right at home here.

Red roses wilt on Houdini’s grave.

Every Halloween, hundreds of devotees make the yearly pilgrimage to Houdini’s final resting place to pay their respects, party, and make an offering—around the anniversary of his death, pumpkins, broomsticks, and playing cards mount like a cairn on his headstone.

The Society of American Magicians, for which Houdini served as president until his death, was the official caretaker of the site until recently.  Between 1975 and 1993, the bust that adorns the Houdini monument was stolen or destroyed four times—it’s thought to be the only graven image in any Jewish Cemetery.

For many years, the likeness was only brought out for yearly ceremonies, but in 2011, a group of magicians from the Scranton Houdini Museum engaged in some guerrilla restoration, installing a new bust with the blessing of Houdini’s family.  The group has since taken over responsibilities for the site’s care, and so far the monument remains unscathed.

With no funds to reoccupy, renovate, or demolish the old office building, its likely to stand until it falls down on its own; the same can’t be said of Houdini’s shiny new effigy.  Odds are he’ll lose his head again—even though it’s screwed on.  So next time you’re traveling down that graveyard highway, be sure to stop by for a look while you can.  There’s no need to wait for the witching hour.  At Machpelah Cemetery, the gate is always open, and every day is Halloween.

UPDATE: The office was demolished on August 21st, 2013.

-Will Ellis

The lobby, with a distinctive arched doorway, bathed in golden morning light.

The second floor.

Valuable copper pipes were removed from the upstairs.

Several rooms feature vintage wallpaper, but wood paneling had been removed.

Sunlight illuminates a stairwell.

A forbidding basement. The structure could only be accessed through a narrow opening that led to this room.

No vacancy.

Dawn breaks on Houdini’s grave.

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