The Muse

Deck:

A visit to one of my old haunts: The Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (Part I)

I’m really not a morbid person.

I swear.

But I know what you’re thinking: “First Tim Burton, and now a graveyard?”

Well in my defense, I went when the sun was high and bright. And I braved the dead of winter, and the (sometimes) quite steep hills and valleys of the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery to bring this to you, my faithful readers.

If you’re wondering what a cemetery has to do with design inspiration, then you obviously haven’t scrolled down to my pictures yet (warning, due to the number of them, I'll be breaking this post up into three parts). Because if you had, you’d realize the sculptural beauty and artistic detail of its elements, and find a layout that would make Frank Lloyd Wright proud.

“You should never build on top of anything directly,” he said once in an interview with Hugh Downes. The developers of this landmark certainly saw his comment coming…

What I know of cemeteries stems back to my visits as a child to those in the Bronx where my grandparents and various great aunts and uncles are buried. Every few months or so, my parents would pile my sister and I into the car and we’d “make the rounds” so to speak. But what I can remember was miles of flat land with very tightly packed rows of headstones.

The Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (yes, Washington Irving is actually buried there) is a sweeping mass of land that runs alongside Route 9 in the Village of Sleepy Hollow, Westchester County, NY, where we have no shortage of historical landmarks. And there is nothing “flat” about it. The cemetery's landscape dips, and turns, and slopes with almost every step and mausoleums are actually built into the hills rather than "on top" of them, creating quite a visual presence.

Speaking of a presence, it is the resting place of not just Irving but a long list of pseudo celebrities and notorious figures, including Elizabeth Arden (1878-1966), Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), Daniel Draper (1841-1931), Harry (1909-1997) and Leona (1920-2007) Helmsley, and many many more.

The village certainly takes the legend and runs with it in various ways. One of which is a monument depicting the Headless Horseman chasing Ichabod Crane. It was brought in secretly overnight at some point during 2006, legend has it (no pun intended). I still pass it everyday on my way to work.

That's me, holding up my hand in mock horror to shield myself.

Move just past the monument and you cross "The Headless Horseman Bridge" in order to get to the cemetery entrance.

A few views from the bridge...

The Old Dutch Church and Burial Ground greets you at the entrance, guarded by a slightly menacing black wrought-iron gate.

The door was locked unfortunately, but from peeking inside I could see an old-fashioned raised pulpit and a massive organ in the balcony.

Tombstones in this section date back to the 1700s and tiny American flags dot the snowcovered ground to mark the graves of Revolutionary War veterans. Most are so old that the etchings are faded and illegible.