World's Greatest Cemeteries

- [Announcer] In this episode of "World's Greatest Cemeteries"... - So, Mark, this is one heck of a door.

- It's one door.

Yes.

- Wow.

What's that made of?

- [Mark] Solid oak.

Yes.

- Solid oak.

I love it.

- When Celia Cruz passed away, thousands of people lined the street as we followed the funeral procession.

- Well, what we know about Melville and Woodlawn is he started out as a young man writing about the South Pacific.

- 400 acres in the middle of the Bronx, New York.

- Yes, that's correct.

(intense music) - The world's greatest cemeteries hold more than mortal remains.

They are monuments to landscape, design, horticulture, and history.

(intense music continues) I've spent years investigating the lives of the dead, finding out all I can about extraordinary people who were outsiders in their own day, but still managed to make significant contributions to humankind.

Welcome to "World's Greatest Cemeteries".

(gentle music) New York, New York, The Big Apple, except we're not in Manhattan.

We're uptown.

We're way uptown.

In fact, we're in the Bronx.

We're at Woodlawn Cemetery, home of titans of music, literature, the arts, and business.

I'm here with Tom Howryletz, who is the general manager of Woodlawn Cemetery.

Tom, how are you?

- I'm very well.

How are you?

- Good.

Excellent.

So, this place is gorgeous, but it's also huge.

- [Tom] Yes.

- How many acres is it?

- We're about 400 acres.

- [Roberto] 400 acres in the middle of the Bronx?

- [Tom] That's correct.

- So, what year was the place founded?

- So, we were established in 1863 by a group of prominent New Yorkers who envisioned a burial ground close to Manhattan.

- Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

I believe the Bronx was probably a lot of farm territory and all that at that time.

- Yes.

Yes, it was.

- Yeah, it was pretty much undeveloped.

So, in terms of burials, are you still burying people here at the cemetery?

- We are.

We're currently burying.

We have about 320,000 individuals interred in our grounds now and we inter over 1,000 each year.

- [Roberto] Wow and do you do cremations?

- [Tom] We do.

That's trending now.

- Yeah.

Well, I'm looking forward to touring the place with your people, all right?

- Great.

- Thank you very much.

- Nice to meet you.

- All right.

(Wild West music) (eagle crying) So, Bat Masterson, right?

Don't you think of that old TV series with Gene Barry?

I think of Bat Masteron as a charming rogue, a guy with a cane, a gun fighter, and a card shark, but in fact, Bat Masterson was more than that, right?

- Well, it's incredible.

This is one of our most visited grave sites.

People come to the office, they ask for Celia Cruz, Duke and Miles, Herman Melville, and Bat Masterson.

We're like, "Why?"

Again, it's the old Gene Barry show, this thought of this guy of the Wild West, but what's remarkable about Bat is he comes back to the East Coast and he's a sports writer at the time when boxing was everything and it was a dangerous game both for the people who participated in it, people who bet on it.

It was big money and I think what's wonderful is, of course, it says that he was loved by everyone - [Roberto] Which can't be true, right?

- No, it can't be true.

- In fact, a big part of the story is that people like Bat Masterson are transplanted from their mythological past into this rock 'em sock 'em hard-nosed reality of being a big New York City journalist, right?

- But I think what it says, it gives you, it reflects his personality.

He goes Wild West for the adventure.

It's where the action is.

It's where things are happening.

It's the gold rush.

It's the development.

It's gun fighters it's all this Wild West activity, but then, that becomes sort of controlled.

What gets outta control, New York City.

So, he came east to where things were happening.

You know, it's the Tenderloin District.

It's boxing.

(bell dings) It's New York at its most corrupt time and Bat Masterson is here.

(upbeat western music) (upbeat jazz music) - We love to talk about figures in history who did something wonderful or amazing or different in their own day, but have somehow passed into less renown and here we have someone who was revolutionary in her time, an entrepreneur, a businesswoman who did fascinating things with hair care and personal care products.

So, who is Walker?

- This is Madam C.J.

Walker and I'm gonna say she is not forgotten when young women are required to do who inspires me most in history, she holds up as one that gets visited by lots of young girls doing their report about Madam Walker.

She, of course, developed hair care and beauty products for women of color.

It wasn't that she became a millionaire, but she empowered all these women of color to have their own businesses.

So, the Walker salons develop all over America.

Everybody's making money, everybody's feeling good, and it was a remarkable thing that she did for women at that time period and remember, women didn't even have the right to vote then.

She didn't have the right to own her own land and that was what she was so proud of was that the Walker Factory was on her own land.

- Fantastic and she has the beautiful mansion somewhere on here also.

- It's Villa Lewaro and Villa Lewaro has been saved thanks to her great-granddaughter A'Lelia Bundles and it has now become a center for women of color to talk about their businesses and what they need to do to accomplish great things.

(upbeat jazz music) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) (uplifting piano music) (uplifting piano music continues) - So, even saying the name Dorothy Parker, it kind of makes me laugh, because I think like a lot of people, I think of Dorothy Parker as being some sort of tipsy socialite with a very witty mind.

(uplifting piano music continues) - [Voice Actor] The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.

- But in fact, there's a lot more to Dorothy Parker than that, right?

Who was Dorothy Parker?

- Well, she's known as being the queen of the Algonquin Round Table, where great wits drank and told stories and critiqued people, but she was a very important writer as a poet.

She was a playwright.

She had columns, she critiqued.

She was just an unbelievable writer.

Her epitaph happens to be one of her poems.

- [Voice Actor] Leave her for a red young rose.

go your way and save your pity.

She is happy for she knows that her dust is very pretty.

- Which is remarkable, because Dorothy Parker was cremated when she passed away.

She gave her estate to Dr. Martin Luther King.

She was a strong advocate of the civil rights movement and when King passed, the ashes were transferred to the NAACP.

So, when the NAACP was selling their building, her ashes were transferred here to Woodlawn and she is here with her parents and grandparents.

It was a marvelous ceremony and I do have to say that they sold custom made gin to pay for her gravestone.

(both laugh) - Which is really fitting, isn't it?

- Yeah.

- [Roberto] Coming up later this episode... - When Celia Cruz passed away, thousands of people lined the street as we followed the funeral procession.

(gentle music) (gulls squawking) Okay, we're talking about Herman Melville and yes, we started with the picture of the white whale.

Yes, it's a cliche, but come on.

That's how people in our generation know about Herman Melville at all, but in fact, Hermann Melville was an amazing writer and he wrote lots of other things besides "Moby Dick".

Let's start with you telling us a bit about Hermann Melville.

- Well, what we know about Melville in Woodlawn is he started out as a young man writing about the South Pacific and everyone in New York couldn't wait for the next issue of palm trees and hula girls and things they didn't know existed and then, of course, he writes the novel that's in him and was highly criticized.

So, he becomes a customs officer.

He continued to write, but he was just totally destroyed by the critics.

What we love about his monument was that his wife who bought the monument for him, it's a writer's monument.

It has an empty scroll.

There is a feather pin underneath it, ivy for immortality.

She wanted him to be memorialized as the writer that he was.

- Well, there's a lot more to be said about Herman Melville and we're actually gonna go now to the last authentic whaling ship in America and learn a bit more about Hermann Melville's whaling days.

We're here with Professor Mary K. Bercaw Edwards who is a scholar and a sailor and a Melville expert.

Professor, welcome.

- Welcome to you, too.

- Where are we?

- [Mary] We are aboard the 1841 whale ship Charles W. Morgan at Mystic Seaport Museum.

- So, the Charles W. Morgan is not a replica.

It's an actual whaling ship built in... - 1841.

- 1841 and that's significant, because Herman Melville, who we're talking about today, began whaling in what year?

- 1841.

He left January 3rd, 1841 aboard a ship named the Acushnet that looks almost exactly like the Charles W. Morgan.

- Why is Herman Melville on a whaling ship?

I understand he came from a fairly well-to-do family.

Is that mostly accurate or what?

- Yes, he came from sort of an upper middle class family, but when he was 10, his father went bankrupt and then, when he was 12, his father died leaving his mother impoverished with eight children.

- Wow.

- And so, because of that, he ended up going to sea as an ordinary sailor, rather than going as an officer - We think of "Moby Dick" as this great classic of American literature, maybe one of the greatest classics in American literature, but at the time, no one liked it, right?

- Yeah.

It was very modern for the time.

It, in many ways, it's almost like the first existential novel.

- [Roberto] Why do you say that?

- [Mary] Because it's a book full of all the great questions of humanity.

What is truth?

Is there a god?

Is there a reason we're on Earth?

All these huge questions.

So, Melville asked all those questions, but he doesn't answer any of them.

So, he's just asking the essential questions of life.

- I think most of us, including myself, would have imagined that Herman Melville would be buried in like New Bedford, Massachusetts or Nantucket or something like that, but we know that he's buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York.

Now, why New York?

- We associate him with the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, which is where he wrote "Moby Dick", but he himself identified as a New Yorker.

So, what other Melville writings would you recommend that people read?

- I think they should read his first book "Typee".

I think they should read two of his short stories, "Bartleby" and "Benito Cereno" and some of his Civil War poetry.

- Well, professor, that was fantastic.

Thank you so much.

(gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle piano music) Well, Irving Berlin is the famous American songwriter composer and he had some big hits like "God Bless America".

- [Susan] "Puttin' on the Ritz".

- Always.

"I'll Be Loving You Always".

- [Susan] "Easter Parade".

- [Roberto] You're better.

I can't keep going.

I bet you could go on.

- "White Christmas".

(Susan laughs) - "White Christmas".

How can I forget "White Christmas"?

Fantastic.

So, why don't you tell us a bit about Irving Berlin?

- Well, he was part of the Tin Pan Alley group.

He came over here and many of them are buried here.

- [Roberto] Right.

- He loses his first wife to tuberculosis.

She's buried in Buffalo and his second wife is here and she's of a different faith.

So, Woodlawn was the perfect cemetery for them, 'cause it's non-sectarian, but he bought his lot in 1928 when his son passed away.

- Very sad.

- And then, of course, he lives on for 101 years, which is just amazing.

- Amazing.

That's right.

- But one of our most famous folks in the simplest grave.

(gentle piano music) (upbeat salsa music) - When I was a kid growing up in an Afro Latin family in Queens, New York, we danced to what we call Latin music, music made by Eddie Palmieri, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamara.

This music is now called... - Salsa.

- Salsa music and the queen of the salseros was this person here who is... - [Susan] Celia Cruz.

- And apparently, Celia Cruz gets a fair amount of visitors.

What kind of visitation does she get?

- She gets thousands of visitors, especially during Hispanic Heritage Month.

- Right.

- Where we do a big tribute to her, a concert out on the lawn, but thousands of people come and bring flowers to her.

- [Roberto] To find out more about Celia Cruz, I interviewed Jose Masso, an expert in modern Latin music and culture.

- I was fortunate.

I worked with Celia Cruz on a number of occasions when she would perform here in the city of Boston, either in concert or at dances, at Newport Jazz Festival.

She was humble, but yet, she really was the queen of Latin music.

So, think about Ella Fitzgerald, the queen of jazz.

Think about Aretha Franklin, the queen of soul, and think maybe about Nina Simone, because Nina was so like on the cutting edge when it came to jazz and pop music and that moment of Africanism and understanding who we were as Black people in the United States and in particular, when it came to politics, put all those three women together and in the Latin side, it would be Celia Cruz who represented who we were as people during that period of time.

When Celia Cruz passed away, thousands of people lined the street as we followed the funeral possession to the church.

Those of us who had the opportunity to go to see her to see where she's interred do so with respect and do so knowing very well the importance of her role in our lives.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - So, Jokichi Takamine, a great scientist, a great humanitarian.

What is he known for?

He's known internationally for isolating adrenaline and his family business went into basically, distribution of medicines, pills, et cetera.

- Right.

- They're still active today.

- And that adrenaline, the isolation of adrenaline, was something which helped asthma sufferers around the world, isn't that right?

- [Susan] That's correct That's correct.

- Fantastic and he's known for something else, though.

- Well, he's really remembered for giving the cherry trees to Washington, D.C. - Those same cherry blossoms that people go to D.C. every year for.

- [Susan] Well, it's a remarkable thing.

If you've never been to the Cherry Blossom Celebration, you should go.

It's so beautiful to have all these petals that turned into little pink snowflakes as you circle the monuments.

- So, Susan is gonna take us through some of the iconography on Mr. Takamine's mausoleum.

So, what do we have here?

- What I love most about mausoleums is it gives you many spaces for symbols.

You can see the palm leaf here, which is the symbol of eternal peace.

You had an narcissus for a life cut short.

Up above is the chrysanthemum, which is a Japanese symbol and of course, inside we have Mount Fuji.

- [Roberto] Fantastic.

- So, it's a mixture of his culture and the American culture of his wife.

(epic musical tones) (upbeat music) - The monuments in historic cemeteries are maintained by skilled craftspersons.

Woodlawn Cemetery hosts an apprenticeship program to introduce young people to these trades.

Roberto, what a good name.

- Good morning.

How are you?

- I'm fine.

I love what you're doing here.

Just explain to me how it is that you're working with young people in this like apprenticeship program.

- Well, we had gotten in partnership with Woodlawn Cemetery and the World Monuments Fund and our Local One bricklayers, they're like craftsmen and International Masonry Institute or IMI.

- Right.

- And they all partnered together to start up this program.

- Yeah.

- Which is a 10-week program from...

It started out with 10 interns and for the past five years, it's been 20 interns.

- Wow.

- For 10 weeks.

- That's great.

- It's a grueling 10 weeks.

- I love it and at the end of that, what kinds of skills are they learning and practicing?

- Well, we teach 'em the basic hand skills for our trade.

Pointers, caulkers, cleaners which is mostly masonry restoration.

- Now, what happens to them after they complete your program?

- Well, after the program is done, during that portion, we watch all the kids.

- Right.

- Or interns and the ones with the best hand skills and the ones that train easier, we try to keep those two.

So, it was very hard to pick the two to stay.

So, we pick two for here.

Then, also, at IMI, they have every month an open enrollment.

- Yeah.

- Which anybody in New York City could take this test.

It's governed by Department of Labor.

- Okay.

- They could take this test and also, get into the union that way, depending on job availability.

- Well, Roberto, thank you so much.

- [Robert] Nice to talk to you.

- Yes, it's a real pleasure.

- Thank you for coming.

- All right.

(jazz music) Well, I've been a musician for many, many years and when you jazz music, you hear about all these famous names and famous people and we're gonna talk about that, because Woodlawn has something called the Jazz Corner.

Susan, what is the jazz corner?

- Well, the majority of our jazz musicians are buried around Duke Ellington.

When it's time to meet your maker you want to be as close to Duke as possible.

- Why is that?

Why do all these... And who are, first of all, who are some of these famous jazz musicians?

- [Susan] Lionel Hampton, Coleman Hawkins.

Cootie Williams, his trumpet player, is here.

- [Roberto] Illinois Jacquet.

- Illinois Jacquet is right across the way.

Jackie McLean is up the hill and of course, there are others from another era here, too.

- Right.

- But it's all about being close to Duke and being basically, being together as a brotherhood.

- However, we're here to talk about someone else today and that is, well, I'll let you see his monument, which is iconic.

Sir Miles Davis.

So, Miles Davis ushered in a new era of jazz, something called jazz fusion, which in some quarters, is still controversial, but Susan, what is it about Miles Davis?

Why is he such a towering figure in jazz?

- Well, because he transitioned.

He comes to New York a dentist child from Alton, Illinois and he's going to school at Julliard and then, he hears Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and it changes his life.

So, he becomes... - Like a lot of people that change their lives.

- So, he becomes part of the bebop movement.

- Right.

- And unfortunately, he becomes addicted to heroin, kicks it to cold turkey on his father's farm in Illinois and then, he comes back to New York and it's the era of the hard bop or cool jazz as people refer.

So, he transitions to this sound that just breaks your heart.

- Yes.

- And nonetheless, so we have "Birth of the Cool", we have "Kind of Blue".

- These are some of the greatest selling jazz albums of all time.

- Exactly and then, from there, he becomes so incredibly famous, but then, the Beatles come to town and he wants to maintain this fame, but he also wants to be part of this young sound and that's the fusion.

Then, the album "Bitches Brew".

- And it's wonderful to see these tributes, all these tributes to this great musician from around the world.

- People come from everywhere.

In Germany, France, and Japan, jazz is incredibly popular and of course, Miles is the most popular figure.

- Right.

- And they come here to...

Some of whom come and play their horns.

Some leave CDs, but again, we get lots of people who leave their rocks to show that they've been here.

(bass string music) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) (uplifting music) - So, Mark, this is one heck of a door.

- That's one door, yes.

- Wow.

What's that made of?

- Solid oak.

- Solid oak.

I love it.

- Yes.

(uplifting music continues) - Let's talk about these, are these boulders?

What is this?

- It's a solid bedrock.

- Bedrock.

- And you can see it's even got the grooves from the glaciers that came in with 20, whenever they came in.

So, yeah.

- And that's incredible.

- It's got the glacier grooves in there.

- So, we're looking at the... - It's a natural rock.

- Right.

We're looking at the rock that's underneath the Bronx here.

- Yes.

- That's amazing.

- Yes.

- And it sort of peaks up at this location.

- Pops up right here.

Yes.

- Fantastic.

So, what are some of the plantings you have in here?

- So, around here, we tried to plant some stuff that grows well in the rock garden.

This is a cotoneaster.

- Okay.

Beautiful.

- It's not a deep-rooted plant.

- Right.

- And it seems to thrive here.

We got three different species or three different cultivars here.

- I see with these little berries, you got a lot of birds in here?

- We get the birds in there in the fall.

They like to eat the little red berries.

- Yeah.

That's fantastic.

And what is this here?

- That's a different type of cotoneaster.

- Beautiful.

- Yes.

- This is extraordinary.

- Yes, it is.

- And I see this sort of the mulch you're using.

Is this bark?

- It's a cedar bark mulch.

Yes.

- Cedar bark mulch.

I love it.

I'm getting ideas for my own garden here.

- Okay.

- Yeah, this is terrific.

- Let me know.

- Okay.

And are these juniper bushes over here?

- Those are some juniper bushes.

Yes.

- Okay.

It was part of the original intent was to have junipers and we got some mugo pines just adjacent to there.

- [Roberto] Right.

- And you can see the blueberries on the...

The blueish colored berries on the junipers and the birds will eat those, as well, in the wintertime.

- Well, my friend, I really appreciate your expertise and your passion.

- Okay.

- Seriously.

- Well, thank you.

- It's a real pleasure.

- No, thank you for doing this.

- My pleasure.

Yeah.

- Just to share this place with people is just wonderful.

- That's all right.

Great.

- I take pride in it, so... - Well, let me walk you over here.

(gentle music) Join us all season long as we travel to the world's greatest cemeteries, touring masterpieces of landscape, gardens, and culture, while reliving dramatic stories about diverse historical figures.

Muhammad Ali, in a way, is still with us.

- [Lonnie] Amen to that.

- As a historic icon.

- And his energy.

- Yeah.

- His spirit is still here with us.

- Dear Louisa, thank you so much for giving all of us little women all over the world such strong women to follow.

- "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Joe, lying on the rug.

- Here lies the body of John Jack, a native of Africa.

- And when the war came in '61, it felt like it was the right thing to do.

- Well, the Chinese were actually brought here as contract workers after the Civil War.

- [Roberto] We'll discover artistic designs, check out stunning vistas, and uncover surprising facts about the past.

- And on his, the staff, he had a friend, a very close friend, an engineer and they actually tented together for a time, Robert E. Lee.

- And at the bottom, we see a common epitaph on Jewish monuments that symbolizes may their souls be bound in the bonds of eternal life.

(relaxing music) - Well, that's our visit to Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York.

Special thanks to all the amazing experts and historians for this episode.

Please check out our website at worldsgreatestcemeteries.com for more information.

See ya next time.

(relaxing music continues) You can find out more about this episode.

Just get in touch or tell us about your favorite cemetery or historical figure at www.worldsgreatestcemeteries.co.

(inspiring music) (intense inspiring music) (intense inspiring music continues) (intense inspiring music continues) (gentle musical tones) (string music) (escalating musical tones)