Green-Wood Cemetery's "Angel of Death"

The “Angel of Death” marks the graves of Charles Schieren, the next-to-last mayor of Brooklyn, and his wife Mary Louise. The Schierens died from pneumonia within 24 hours of one another in 1915.

Considered one of the world’s foremost cemeteries, Green-Wood Cemetery –located in Brooklyn, New York - was established in 1838. The famous names of those buried within its 478 acres read like a who's who of America: Currier and Ives, Tiffany, Steinway, Beecher, Greeley, Clinton, Sperry, Morse, Bernstein, Squibb, Pfizer, and FAO Schwarz. The cemetery’s monuments run the gamut from simple steles to ornate Gothic Revival mausoleums, with the whimsical and sometimes eerie (as evidenced in the photo above) represented as well.

An archival shot of this most unusual monument appears in my book Green-Wood Cemetery by Alexandra Kathryn Mosca. Published in 2008, by Arcadia Publishing as part of its Images of America Series, the book chronicles many of Green-Wood's notables through words and photos.