In Woodlawn, one can view fine works of architecture and sculpture. At the entrance, mausoleums are interspersed with more modest graves, as in most cemeteries. The Collis Huntington Mausoleum is near the main entrance, and because of his importance, it is perhaps fitting that it should be situated there. Collis Huntington (b. 1821 Oneonta, NY – d. Pine Knot, Adirondacks, NY 1900) was one of the big four (Mark Hopkins, Charles Crocker & Leland Stanford) who built the Central Pacific Railroad. He was a philanthropist and an art patron. It was said of him that he was 'a builder not a puller down.' He was considered to be the reverse of Jay Gould. Huntington earned his first dollar pulling wood. As a youth, he worked on a farm for one year and saved his entire salary — $84. He sold clocks in the South to make money. In 1842, he partnered with his brother in a store in Oneonta, NY. It was a success. He went to California during the gold rush by way of Panama to be a merchant. He ended up in Sacramento, where he set up his trading business under a tent. He built a store which served the surrounding Sierra mining camps by sending teams out to them. He bought bar steel at 1 cent a pound when it was cheap, stored it and when quartz mining replaced placer mining the steel became valuable and he sold the steel for $1 per pound. Mark Hopkins joined him in the hardware business. They were joined by Leland Stanford and the Crocker brothers. Stanford broached the idea of a railroad, and the men with T. T. Judah and the men organized the Central Pacific Railroad Company with Huntington as Vice President with capital of $8,500,000. They were ridiculed as 'Pacific railroad crazy.' Congress became interested. Huntington went to New York and raised $1,500,000 on his personal word to safeguard the money. They got money from the government only after they had completed sections of mileage and they mortgaged themselves to the maximum. The transcontinental railroad was historically complete in 1869. Huntington went on to build a railroad from Portland, Oregon to New Orleans. Huntington with his partners built the Southern Pacific railroad from San Francisco through Los Angeles Arizona New Mexico and Texas. Finally their railroad, the Southern Pacific, had nine thousand miles of track. It was a stupendous achievement. He went on to complete the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. He was associated with the Pacific Mail Steamship Company and he founded the city of Newport News Virgin and invested $7 million in a shipyard which employed 4,000 people there. Huntington maintained a school for his workers' children there at his own expense. In New York, he maintained offices in the Mills Building. He had homes in Throgg's Neck, New York and San Francisco. Huntington traveled around the country in his private railroad cars 'Oneonta 1' and 'Oneonta 2.' He bought art but never yachts 'My ideas don't run to yachts. They're a little too slow for me.' He married Arabella D. Worsham a widower and adopted her son Archer. After his death she married his nephew. At Huntington's death, he was a member of the Union League, The New England Society, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The American Geographical Society, the American Museum of Natural History and The New York Genealogical Society. He was known for his business maxims, one of which was: 'Do not be afraid to do business with a rascal – only watch him; but avoid a fool, for you can never make anything out of him.' His Woodlawn Cemetery mausoleum cost $250,000. It took five years to construct. The architect of the tomb is Robert Caterson. He modeled the granite staircase after the one in New York's now demolished Pennsylvania Railroad Station. Herbert Adams designed the doors in 1932.
Herbert Adams
(b. 1848 Vermont – d. NY 1945)
a sculptor, attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Normal Art School. Later he taught at the Art School of Pratt Institute in New York. He reaped great praise for his sculptured portrait busts of women, and later, his portrait medallions and bas-reliefs.In New York City, he sculpted the William Cullen Bryant statue in Bryant Park (1911); two bronze doors for the Vanderbilt Memorial in St. Bartholomew's Church; the statue of Solon along the Madison Avenue side of the Appellate Court Building at 25th Street; the doors leading to the gallery at the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the figures of Plato, Phidias, Praxiteles, and Demosthenes to the right of the pediment on the exterior frieze of the Brooklyn Museum; the Hoyt Memorial in Judson Memorial Church; the Pratt Memorial Angel at the Baptist Emmanuel Church (Brooklyn); the bronze portrait relief of Joseph H. Choate in the Union League club; portrait busts of John Marshall, Joseph Story, William Cullen Bryant and William Ellen Channing in the Hall of Fame of Great Americans (Bronx Community College); and the bronze doors for the Collis P. Huntington mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery. Adams received gold medals from the Philadelphia Art Club, Charleston Exposition, Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the National Academy of Design, National Institute of Arts and Letters and a Medal of Honor at the Panama-Pacific Exposition. He was founder and three times president of the National Sculpture Society. Adams was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1899 and the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1912.
Robert Caterson
(b. 1860 – d. Mt. Vernon 1938)
was a sculptor and architect who actively worked on Grand Central Station and designed the Huntington Mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery. With the contributions of schoolchildren all over the country, Caterson was commissioned to do a War Dog Memorial in Hartsdale Pet Cemetery (1923; Hartsdale, NY). He committed suicide when the tombstone business he had founded 43 years previous went bankrupt and was to be sold by the marshal.
Jay Gould
(b. 1836 Roxbury CT – d. NY 1892)
was a financier and railroad king and the embodiment of the excess of the gilded age. He was called a man who was generous to his friends but bitter and unforgiving to his enemies. Gould began as a printer in Stamford Ct. but he was fired for editing a journalist's prose. Next he was granted a contract to teach in the Catskills in Delaware County but Gould disparaged the intelligence the committee that hired him and he lost the job. His next job was as a peddler where he drove a wagon selling tin cups and tin basins to storekeepers. On that job he met a wealthy tanner Colonel Dadoo. Gould tried to cheat him on the value of tin ware but Pratt was impressed with Gould's salesmanship. Pratt brought Gould into the tannery business; they were partners within a year. Gould went to Pennsylvania to buy a tract of woodland; he started tanneries there and in the process found a new town Gouldsborough. Gould and Pratt got into a business dispute there were rumors they fired shotguns at one another. Gould decamped for New York with money. Next he was hired next by Daniel Drew of the Erie Railroad along with Jim Fisk. Drew made Fisk and Gould directors of the railroad. Commodore Vanderbilt had said publicly he would gain control of the company and throw Drew out. The struggle was known as the Erie War. Drew, Fisk and Gould looted the company of $4 million and decamped from New York to Jersey City and defied the State of New York to do anything about it. They had a private army and placed cannon on the waterfront to keep Vanderbilt away. Vanderbilt flailed away in court. Finally a deal was struck with Drew making a bargain that would have cut Fisk and Gould out but they walked in on the meeting. The deal was made anyway; Vanderbilt got his money back and Drew got to keep the railroad. Fisk and Gould however cheated Drew in a speculative bank deal and bankrupted him. Drew said of Gould, 'His touch is of death.' Boss Tweed, the Tammany Hall leader, worked for both sides in the dispute, but in the end became an ally of Gould. Gould then formed the Gold Conspiracy. It was a plot to corner the gold supply. For it to work, the government could not sell gold. Gould bribed Ulysses S. Grant's bother-in-law, Abel Rathbone Corbin, with a $25,000 check. He sent a letter to Grant's private secretary, General Horace Porter, saying $500,000 had been put into his account. Corbin wrote Grant a letter asking him not to sell gold. Porter opened this letter, figured out the scam, and wrote to Grant that he suspected a scheme to inflated gold. Grant sold gold. Gould told no one of his plans, not even his partner Jim Fisk. Gould sold gold. The day was known as Black Friday Oct 4, 1869. All the gold speculators except Gould were ruined. Men went mad. A false rumor went out that the mob cry outside the exchange was, 'Who killed Leupp?' The rumor became a 'fact.' Fisk repudiated all purchases made by his brokers. The gold brokers went bankrupt, but in compensation, Gould gave the brokers a small income for life. He became a symbol for greed and corruption. Gould was lampooned in the press and became the most hated man in America. He went on to successfully manage and build other railroads. He left an estate estimated at $65 – $100 million. At his death, he was president of the Missouri Pacific and Manhattan Elevated, Texas Pacific, St. Louis and Iron Mountain, the International and Great Northern railroads. He was a director of Richmond Terminal, Western Union and Union Pacific. He was the largest stockholder in Western Union. Gould died at home of consumption. A Presbyterian minister presided at his funeral. Collis P. Huntington when asked what effect Gould's death would have on the stock market, said, 'None whatsoever. Men are individuals. Property does not die….' In fact, much of the stock Gould held increased in value the day after his death. The locomotives of the Manhattan Elevated Co. were draped in black on the news of his death. A few people bought forged Gould family visiting cards to try to get into Gould's home to view his corpse. One old woman pulled out a rusty pistol when she was refused admittance. She cried out 'They're rich enough. Why didn't they hire a church?' Crowds gathered outside the Gould home. There was fear of a riot as anarchists were said to be present. Servants shooed the commoners away, and general order was kept by the police, who kept 25 officers in reserve, in chase there was trouble. Those in attendance at his funeral included Henry Villard, J. Pierpont Morgan, Chauncey M Depew, Ogden Mills and William Rockefeller. Gould's casket was sealed with lead when he died and his unmarked 1889 Woodlawn Cemetery mausoleum was guarded for 10 years by Pinkerton detectives.
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1) Woodlawn Cemetery Map [46]
