Remembering Joan
Hartsdale and NYC: March 23, 2006
I visited New
York City from March 22 through the 25th, and on Joan's birthday,
the 23rd,
travelled by train out to Hartsdale (@40 miles north of NYC),
where
Joan is interred at the Ferncliff Mausoleum along with her husband Al Steele.
Back in NYC later that evening, I attended a showing of "Berserk"
at the Chelsea Clearview Cinema, along with other Joan fans.
Here are a
few photos of what I saw and did on Joan's birthday 2006.
(For May 10, 2007, photos of flowers from this site's readers delivered to Ferncliff, click here. And here for March 23, 2008, photos.)
The Hartsdale train station. The trip to Hartsdale took about 40 minutes from Grand Central Station in NYC (the Harlem Line).
A view of
downtown Hartsdale, heading from the train station toward Ferncliff. (Cabbies
hang around the train station, and I found a cab immediately after my arrival.
My cabbie alarmed me, though, when he said re Ferncliff, "It's quite a
drive out theah. It's in a really rural areah." Being from Texas, "rural"
meant to me "20 or 30 miles out of town" and I kind of got nervous
about what the impending fare might be. It turned out, though, that "rural"
in this case meant... only about a mile!)
While the weather in both the
city and surrounding areas had been a cloudy, blustery, chilly 45-ish on
the 22nd when I first arrived in town, by the 23rd the sky was a gorgeous
crystalline blue and the temperature lounging moderately in the low 50s--
perfect
for enjoying my train trip and the picturesque Hartsdale environs.
The Ferncliff Mausoleum, where Joan is interred.
Closeup of the Ferncliff Mausoleum entrance.
Two views of the Ferncliff Cemetery, from the steps of the Mausoleum.
On to Interior Photos of the Mausoleum and Photos of Joan's Crypt