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Welcome
Taphophilia (dot) Com...
A repository of morbid curiosities:
Thanatology and Taphophile Issues, Cemetery,
Funeral Industry and Death Related News.
A Taphophilia Thank You...
Taphophilia (dot) Com would not be possible without the knowledge, experience and talent of DarkestWeb. From its conception and early development, DarkestWeb was faced with many challenges; from inspiring and motivating, to providing guidance and direction. The continued dedication and support has produced results greater than ever expected, and for this, I owe a huge debt of gratitude.
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Graveyards of Chicago:
The People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries
By Matt Hucke And Ursula Bielski. Discover a Chicago That Exists Just Beneath the Surface - About Six Feet Under! Take a tour of Chicago's permanent residents! Please visit the Lake Claremont Press website to purchase your copy of Graveyards of Chicago today!
Green-Wood Cemetery Arcadia Publishing announces the release of Alexandra Mosca's historic account of one of New York's most famous cemeteries. Aracdia Publishing's Images of America series has an extensive catalog of many cemetery publications! Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Green-Wood Cemetery and to browse other available titles!
Men of Mortuaries Calendar
To purchase your 2008 calendar, learn more about the KAMMCARES Foundation, or to be featured in the 2009 calendar, please visit Men of Mortuaries.
Epitaphs: The Magazine for Cemetery Lovers By Cemetery Lovers
For information regarding subscriptions, single issues, submission guidelines, deadlines, classifieds or advertising for future issues, please visit The Cemetery Club.
Guardians of the Soul: Angels and Innocents, Mourners and Saints, Indiana's remarkable cemetery sculpture
with photography by John Bower and foreword by Claude Cookman is now
available. Please visit
Studio Indiana for more information.
West Springfield Massachusetts: Stories Carved in Stone by Rusty Clark features information on early New England gravestone carvers with more than two hundred photos and illustrations. Please visit the Dog Pond Press website.
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Leona: I'm Dead Set On Moving Harry |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Monday, 26 July 2004 |
July 26,2004
By ANDREA PEYSER
THERE goes the neighborhood.
Hotel empress Leona Helmsley is plotting to uproot beloved hubby Harry from his final resting spot at Woodlawn Cemetery — because his "view" will soon be ruined by a high-rise crypt condo set to house the lowly masses.
Leona has slapped a $150 million lawsuit against the historic Bronx cemetery for constructing the massive, public mausoleum directly opposite Harry's palace.
Leona is arguing that she planned for the couple's deaths in high style, constructing the family's own mausoleum in one of the city's premier resting places. There, she and kin would be rubbing elbows throughout eternity with the cream of the dearly departed — from Fiorello La Guardia and Robert Moses to Joseph Pulitzer, J.C. Penney and salsa legend Celia Cruz.
But in what has become the first New York real-estate nightmare to strike from beyond the grave, a livid Helmsley says the neighborhood's new death digs — marketed as an affordable burial option for thousands of little people — will soon permanently block her tomb with a view.
"I paid them for the mausoleum. What they did is a disgrace!" Leona told me.
In addition to the suit against Woodlawn — where the elite have met in death since 1863 — Leona is hanging a "for-sale" sign on her exclusive mausoleum.
That's right — Leona plans to disinter the remains of her late real-estate magnate husband and those of her son, Jay Panzirer, and relocate them to the suburbs.
Now the Helmsleys, whose name is as embedded in this city as the Empire State Building, of which Leona is part-owner, are set to become everlasting residents of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery near Tarrytown.
In that bucolic setting, which dates back to 1692, the Helmsleys will have all the time in the world to schmooze with such luminaries as Walter Chrysler, Andrew Carnegie, Washington Irving and Louisa May Alcott.
"Whenever I think about it, I feel like crying," said Leona. "I have a child there [in Woodlawn]. I have Harry."
In Leona's lawsuit, filed quietly in Bronx Supreme Court, the 84-year-old hotelier demands that the not-for-profit Woodlawn Cemetery pony up $100 million for causing "severe anguish and emotional distress . . . as well as destroy[ing] the open view, serenity, tranquility and enjoyment of the Helmsley burial site."
Where once Leona's mausoleum looked out on a gated field, now it's "directly opposite and in full view of what will be a busy necropolis thoroughfare," her suit complains, "in which thousands of individuals will be interred and which will likely attract many thousands of visitors."
She claims that Woodlawn led her to believe this field would remain vacant.
Leona is also demanding another $50 million from Woodlawn to cover the cost of moving the Helmsley mausoleum — which features a lavish, pink-marble interior and is decorated with three stained-glass renderings of the Manhattan skyline. The structure currently sits on a 2,064 square-foot funeral plot that Leona purchased in 1978 for $59,856.
In addition, her lawsuit asks for $1 million — a day — "until the nuisance is removed." That "nuisance" is Woodlawn's soon-to-be-completed Garden Conservatory Mausoleum, designed to house the bodies or ashes of nearly 10,000 people.
But Leona says she is dropping her demand that Woodlawn demolish the mass mausoleum, "out of respect for the families" who have purchased space there.
James Zirin, an attorney for Woodlawn, says, "I think you can assume the cemetery believes [the lawsuit] is totally without merit." He declined to comment further, citing the pending litigation.
Sources close to Leona say that when she filed her suit back in December, Woodlawn offered to move her loved ones elsewhere on the property. But negotiations broke down when an acceptable site could not be found.
Then Leona bought a 30,000-square-foot plot in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery for an undisclosed sum. The new place sits atop a hill near the Pocantico River.
Rather than try to move the mausoleum, Leona plans to sell it and build a new and bigger one, which one day will be home to Leona as well as her brother and sister-in-law, Alvin and Susan Rosenthal.
Harry's crypt will forever bear the inscription: "I never knew a day I did not love you — Leona."
If he only knew.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=106&ncid=742&e=3&u=/nypost/20040726/cm_nypost/imdeadsetonmovingharryleona
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Taphophilia?
taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)
ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"
DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries
Quote Repository
“Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! O grave! where is thy victory? O death! where is thy sting?” Sir Walter Scott
Shirtless and Sculpted
The Men of Mortuaries 2008 Calendar is now available! All sale proceeds benefit KAMMCARES, a breast cancer foundation.
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