The secret city

the long version

"Woodlawn Cemetery is a massive necropolis, four hundred immaculately and privately maintained acres in the north Bronx that serve as the final resting place for three hundred thousand New Yorkers. Its long-term inhabitants include Herman Melville, Duke Ellington, Robert Moses, Fiorello La Guardia, Miles Davis, and dozens of Gilded Age grandees - including Goulds and Astors - who were determined to spend eternity with opulence to match their residences while alive." "Writer Fred Goodman stumbled upon Woodlawn one day when he wandered off his bicycling path. The Secret City is the product of his obsessive researches into the lives of many of the once famed, now forgotten men and women buried there. Featuring nine episodes chronologically arranged, each story presents an exceptional individual caught up in a defining or historical moment of New York's social, political, commercial, or artistic life."--BOOK JACKET.