Thursday

Cemetery Fringes (Part 2)

Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Maspeth, Queens is the one at the top, separated from the northern half of Lutheran Cemetery by the diagonal road (Elliot Ave.). This “garden cemetery,” with rolling hills and lush vegetation, has an interesting jagged perimeter.


There are 29 cemeteries in Queens, where more than five million people are buried. That’s almost three times the borough’s current living population, many of whom live on the fringes of the “Cemetery Belt.”

A house with a cemetery for its extended back yard is not uncommon in Queens (click image to enlarge).

Snaking off mighty Metropolitan Ave., right near Lutheran Cemetery, is Admiral Ave., which leads to an alley, which leads to the tracks.


This is the alley-like street off Admiral Ave. (Terrace Court). Notice the freshly opened beer in the foreground. If you click the picture to enlarge it, you can also see some balloons (above the red car). It was Saturday afternoon and a kiddy party was in progress while I was doing my “work.”





Calvary Cemetery in Maspeth, Queens


Cemetery Nook: Street level view of what appears as a sharp right angle on the satellite photo. Notice the melange of textures that converge in the corner: two different stone walls, a metal fence, some scraggly vegetation and some trash.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for Cemetery Fringes. The incinerator and Mt. Zion! And the stone cut in half (may lightning strike me), and the van with the groovy graffiti. You make these amazing discoveries seem commonplace, but I think there's genius at work here. I mean, I can't explain it, but I feel excitement at some of these shots. They instantly reveal a world that's beautiful and strange and true.

    The shots are surprising—like the colors on that abandoned van, or that open space with the parked cars beside the incinerator against the background crowded with gravestones, or the German shephard on the roof. They seem off-hand and unforced, so they're disarming, when of course we know you've searched for them and then selected them carefully—and yet they're still fresh as any discovery. It makes us wish we were with you on your mission.

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  2. I loved your cemetaries fringe text and space photographs. What struck me most forcefully was how much they look like "Olde-Urban-Ballyards" from the sky...
    Ebbets...The Polo Grounds, Comiskey...Olde Briggs Field/Tiger Stadium in Detroit...Wrigley in Chi-Town...The Olde Crosley Field in Cinci... Fenway...Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium in Philly...The ultimate inner city field...Olde Forbes Field at the Pitt campus...The Wrigley Field in Los Angeles which was the home of THE HOLLYWOOD STARS...The minor league Angels before the early '60's expansion...and The Home of The old Home-run Derby show...and also hosted a chi-town cubs triple-A team called "The Catalina Cubs." Kezar Stadium...The San francisco Seals of The PCL. and the place where Clint Eastwood crushed The Scorpio killer in "DIRTY HARRY." GOD!!!! Is America MAD...about letting form follow function and the ecology of the city scape... We have lost so much...What about The Olde Sportsmen's Park in St. Louis which hosted the Browns before they became the Orioles in 1953, and The Cards before the last two Busch Stadiums. I think that there is an "aesthetics" in total equanimity to all nostalgia which is not bitter, maudlin, or sanguine...

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