Cities of the Dead

There are many cities within NYC -- the public housing projects, jails, hospitals, public schools, ports, airports -- that, along with NYC's 300 neighborhoods, make you realize that we are many cities joined and commingling together.

But there's one city within NYC teaming with residents that they literally do not live in -- the cemeteries.

The five boroughs are replete with them. Every borough is full of dead bodies under the ground or within the tombs of these places. There's even a big article and new book about these "cities of the dead" in NYC -- and the fascinating stories these corpses tell, the history of their lives, the places they lived, and their final resting places. These people may be dead, they may populate the cemeteries across the city, but their history and impact and legacies are very much alive and well in NYC today.  

At the moment the cemeteries of NYC are getting a great deal of attention -- but the dead have always been with us and always will be. 

And the dead don't "only know Brooklyn" -- they also know the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. Each borough has multiple cemeteries with a large number of people permanently taking up valuable NYC real estate -- forever. Here's a list of NYC's cemeteries and some of the notable people who are resting for eternity here.

In fact, if there's one borough that the dead probably "know" best, it's the Bronx. Woodlawn Cemetary is practically a rioutous party scene of famous dead people, a green carpet for deceased celebrities throughout history -- Herman Melville, Irving Berline, George M. Cohan, Fiorello LaGuardia, Robert Moses, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Lionel Hampton, Max Roach, Charles Evan Hughes, Joseph Pulitzer, FW Woolworth, and many more. 

They, and everyone buried in NYC, are all equal now.