Some Celebrity Graves I've Visited

Greta Garbo was notorious for spurning autograph requests--checks she signed occasionally appear on the collectibles market for well over a thousand dollars--but etched for everlastingness on her gravestone is the much-solicited signature. She died in Manhattan in 1990, age 84, and is buried at Skogskyrkogården (The Woodland Cemetery) in Stockholm, the city of her birth.

 Fairmont, Ind.: Born on February 8, 1931, James Dean would soon turn 80 were he alive. He died in 1955, age 24, in a head-on collision while driving his new Porsche near Cholame, Calif., and is buried in the Hoosier hamlet where he spent most of his youth. 

 East Hampton, N.Y.: Not far from Grey Gardens, in Most Holy Trinity Catholic Cemetery, rests Big Edie, whose funeral Jackie attended. About 84 miles away, at the opposite end of Long Island, lies Little Edie in Locust Valley Cemetery. She died nine years ago, on January 14, 2002, age 84.

 St. Louis: This year is the centennial of the birth of Tennessee Williams, born in Columbus, Miss., on March 26, 1911, and buried in Calvary Cemetery in the city where the playwright's family moved when he was seven. Williams died, age 71, on February 25, 1983, at New York City's Hotel Elysée--baptized by Tallulah Bankhead as the Hotel Easy Lay. 

 Next to Williams's grave is that of his tragic sister, Rose, who spent most of her life institutionalized and served as the model for Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, the final line from which provides the inscription on her marker.

 Los Angeles: Because it was already the eternal home of the two women who raised her, her aunt Ana Lower and her guardian Grace Goddard, Marilyn Monroe reposes with them at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery. Marilyn's was the first celebrity entombment here, and since her death in 1962, she has been followed to this pocket-sized burial ground by more than 200 other big names, including Truman Capote, Elizabeth Montgomery, Peggy Lee and, recently, Farrah Fawcett. This cemetery will be the final resting place of Elizabeth Taylor, next to her parents.

 Montgomery, Ala.: My hand rests on the marble replica of  Hank Williams Sr.'s cowboy hat at his grave in the Oakwood Annex Cemetery. He died 58 years ago, on January 1, 1953, of a heart attack, age 29.

Chestertown, Md.:  Hank's fellow Alabamian Tallulah Bankhead is interred next to her only sibling, Evelyn Eugenia, known as "Sister," in Saint Paul's Kent Churchyard. Tallulah died in New York City from double pneumonia, complicated by emphysema and malnutrition, age 66. Her concluding utterance was supposedly, "Codeine . . . bourbon."

 Paris: Jim Morrison's grave in Père Lachaise is its most visited--and graffitied. Since my stop there, the bust was thieved.

 East Hampton, N.Y.:  How I hold high the Jewish custom of leaving a pebble on a tombstone to symbolize that someone has honored the memory of the deceased with a visit. I unforuntately did not have a stone to place on Frank O'Hara's marker at the Green River Cemetery. His epitaph reads Grace to be born and live as variously as possible.

  Around Leonard Bernstein's marker in Green-Wood Cemetery were many stones of many sizes. He rests on the highest point in Brooklyn.

 Memphis: Here lies the King.

As Elvis, Leon Trotsky is buried on the grounds of his home--his final one, now a museum in Mexico City.

Three Humble Historic Houses

 This house at 89-70 Cooper Avenue in the Glendale section of Queens, N.Y., played the part of Archie Bunker's home in the credits for All in the Family. The fictitious address in the series was 704 Hauser Street. Hauser, from the German Haus, denotes someone who gives shelter or protection.

 Glendale is characterized not only by its rows and rows of low-scale, side-by-side houses but also by its many graveyards, including--directly across the street from the Bunker abode (on the right)--St. John's Cemetery, where are buried Lucky Luciano, Charles Atlas, John Gotti and Robert Mapplethorpe, himself a Queens native.

 The first episode of All in the Family aired 40 years ago, on January 12, 1971. Norman Lear wanted to shoot the series in black and white, but acquiescing to network demands for color, found middle ground by appointing the set in a drab palette.
To see Archie's chair on a commemorative stamp, visit:  A Salute to the Seventies in Stamps

 About three-and-a-half miles from Archie Bunker's is Louis Armstrong House at 34-56 107th Street in Corona, a Queens neighborhood that has also been home, at one time or another, to Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Madonna (briefly, circa 1979) and Paul Simon, who was born there. 

 Armstrong moved into his house in 1943 and on July 6, 1971, died here in the Master Bedroom--in his sleep, age 69.

 At the opposite end of Long Island from Queens stands this house at 830 Fireplace Road near East Hampton, home to Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner.

 It was in this barn, just steps from the house, that Pollock developed his Jack-the-Dripper technique and spattered all his most renowned canvasses.

After his death, Pollock's widow, Lee Krasner, painted her works in the barn studio. Less than a mile way, in 1956, Pollock died in a car crash, age 44.

Brad Pitt-Related Architecture in New Orleans

 It was while filming Interview With the Vampire in the early 1990s that William Bradley Pitt spent his first stretch of time in New Orleans. While there to make The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, he bought a house in the French Quarter on January 2, 2007. That same year he founded Make It Right to spur redevelopment in the ruined Lower Ninth Ward. This house is a result of that effort. 

 The goal of Make It Right is to build 150 homes. So far, about 84 have gone up or are underway. 

 Make It Right hired a team of local, national and international architects to come up with designs for 13 prototypes.

 This is the Garden Prototype, designed by KieranTimberlake of Philadelphia.

 Most of the homes are on stilts.

However, Float House by Thom Mayne's Morphosis is not on stilts. In case of flooding, it is designed to turn into a raft that rises on guideposts to keep it from drifting away.

The Lagniappe House was designed by Concordia, a New Orleans firm. 

 Each single-family house costs in the neighborhood of $150,000, funded with donations.

 In the parts of Benjamin Button set in the '60s, the characters played by Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett feather a love nest in this mod mid-century apartment complex at Napoleon Avenue and South Saratoga Street, the area of New Orleans known as Uptown.  

Smack across the street from the apartment building, at 2037 Napoleon Avenue, is Pagoda House, built in 1904 and designed by Frank P. Gravely & Co. This house has nothing whatsoever to do with Brad Pitt, but what a tasty gumbo of architecture is New Orleans.

 Here is Brad Pitt's house at 521 Governor Nicholls Street in the French Quarter.

 Brad Pitt's New Orleans home dates from the 1830s, but as an avowed orthodox Modernist (just look at those Lower Ninth Ward houses), he might prefer the Steinberg-Fischbach House. Designed by Curtis and Davis in 1955, it asserts an audacious individualism at 1201 Conery Street in the Garden District.

Two blocks away, at 2627 Coliseum Street, is James Eustis House, designed in 1876 by William A. Freret Jr., and now part-time home to Brad Pitt's fellow thesp, Sandra Bullock. 
To look at another post about the Crescent City, visit: On Mardi Gras, Beloved Logos of New Orleans

Art Deco Doors in N.Y.C.

 7500 Bay Parkway, Brooklyn.

 The Century, 25 Central Park West.

 1150 Grand Concourse, Bronx.

700 Fort Washington Avenue, Manhattan.

 175 West 92nd Street, Manhattan.

 Hampshire House, 150 Central Park South.

8214 Fourth Avenue, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

 310 Riverside Drive, Manhattan.

 269 Henry Street, Brooklyn Heights.

 200 West 86th Street, Manhattan.

 3 East 84th Street, Manhattan.

29 West 64th Street, Manhattan.

501 West 113th Street, Manhattan.

 The Majestic, 115 Central Park West.

3 East 66th Street, Manhattan.

49 West 96th Street, Manhattan.

Home.

To see more doors, visit: Eloquent Opening Statements in New York City & Red Doors of the Upper East Side