This makes me consider the possibility that people might actually try to live or at least sleep in these structures. I don’t know how to interpret this scene. Mostly it is just garbage and leaves but there appears to be an empty can of cat food and possibly an article of clothing or a facemask on the right. The name on the bottom crypt appears to be MARY ELLEN JOHNSON.
I remember first spotting this and a series of other mausoleums along the road that leads to the chapel. I thought they looked like underground nightclubs. and imagined them being used as such by nocturnal party animals intent on finding new venues at which to rave.
More realistically, I have in fact seen some of Calvary’s mausolea used as storage closets for groundskeepers’ equipment. Another early memory of a Calvary mausoleum was over by Bradley Avenue, by the fortune cookie factory. One of the mausoleum doors had been opened and as I spotted this I smelled the odd aroma of fortune cookies baking. I did not know that was the origin of the scent. I thought the stench of death was leaking from the opened mausoleum crypts. Nothing doing. Just fortune cookies in the oven.
The top name on the above-ground monument is Patrick Lovejoy. In February of 1860 the New York Times referenced one Patrick Lovejoy as having been shot by someone named John Crowley. If this is the same Patrick Lovejoy as named on this tomb he evidently survived the shooting but died later in 1860.
