Cemetery the chord is a huge territory of Queens occupied by cemeteries. They then closely pressed to each other, interspersed residential streets of the quarter Glendale. Twenty-nine cemeteries (14 Jewish, 4 Catholic, 3 Protestant, and 8 others) take up so much space that can be seen from space. There are millions of graves – dead in Queens at least three times more than the living.

So many cemeteries there was here no accident. By the mid-nineteenth century Manhattan churchyards were full. A series of outbreaks of cholera has convinced society in theory, according to which the groundwater was contracted from the dead bodies. as a result, In new York adopted the act On state rural cemeteries" who entered paid burial. Before the dead were buried either in the Church cemeteries, or on family farms. Now non-profit organizations were allowed to buy land and sell plots of land for burial. But in 1852 the city Council of new York passed a law already expressly forbade to bury in the city.

The Board of Trustees of the Catholic St. Patrick's Cathedral first acquired land in Queens, and in 1848 the first deceased was buried at Calvary cemetery (now it is one of the oldest in the USA). By 1852 there was already about 50 funerals a day – half of them children of the Irish poor to seven years. Gradually began to open up Protestant, Jewish and interfaith cemetery. In the case entered and land speculators who bought cheap farmland, then to resell them under the resting places, but still the main cemetery were opened Church organizations.

Now the cemetery belt often visit to find a specific grave of a historical person. Although many cemeteries remain in force, most of the graves were laid before the mid-twentieth century. On the tombstones embossed forgotten or hitherto known names – actors, athletes, military personnel, politicians, gangsters. No wonder Francis Coppola was filming a funeral scene of Vito Corleone in "the Godfather" is on the old Calvary cemetery. In the frame glimpsed the silhouette of the Johnston mausoleum – a huge structure with several floors, dominant over the rows of graves.

People often visit a Jewish cemetery mount Carmel there under modest black monument lies the world-famous writer Sholem Aleichem. The family grave of the infamous actress Mae West cemetery cypress hills always come fans. In the cemetery of St. Michael at the tomb of the "king of ragtime" Scott Joplin every year is held a concert in his honor. And the abandoned Jewish cemetery of Machpelah very popular is the tomb of the famous illusionist Harry Houdini. Entrance from cypress hills street is not always open, but the section of the Houdini family (he is right at the entrance) cleverly sneak his fans. The great magician died in 1926 on Halloween, and since then, every October 31, somebody always comes to elegant marble headstone. Leave there cards, pumpkins, rocks. Kneeling female figure is part of the gravestone, not to steal, but a bust of Houdini abducted more than once.