Tombstone on Sidewalk Leads to a History Lesson
You can find just about anything on the sidewalks of New York, so when John Lankenau happened upon a tombstone while walking his dog one night a few years ago, he took his grim discovery in stride. Then he did what any self-respecting citizen would do: He carted the two-and-a-half-foot-high granite marker, home for safe-keeping.
The tombstone, which John Lankenau found leaning against a fire hydrant in Manhattan, cited the year — 1910 — that Hinda Amchanitzky died.
“I didn’t think it would last long there until it got vandalized or dogs urinated on it,” Mr. Lankenau recalled. “It once meant something to somebody. I just couldn’t imagine someone’s life sitting on the street.”
But a tombstone is not the sort of missing object people ordinarily claim. So Mr. Lankenau kept it, first in his apartment on the Lower East Side, not far from where he found it, and later in the garden behind his building, a tantalizing totem of urban anonymity and fleeting mortality.
His own life as an artist and a part-time cook went on. But he was periodically sidetracked by the puzzling questions his discovery posed: How did a tombstone wind up propped against a fire hydrant on East Fourth Street between Avenues C and D? And who was Hinda Amchanitzky?...
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The tombstone, which John Lankenau found leaning against a fire hydrant in Manhattan, cited the year — 1910 — that Hinda Amchanitzky died.
“I didn’t think it would last long there until it got vandalized or dogs urinated on it,” Mr. Lankenau recalled. “It once meant something to somebody. I just couldn’t imagine someone’s life sitting on the street.”
But a tombstone is not the sort of missing object people ordinarily claim. So Mr. Lankenau kept it, first in his apartment on the Lower East Side, not far from where he found it, and later in the garden behind his building, a tantalizing totem of urban anonymity and fleeting mortality.
His own life as an artist and a part-time cook went on. But he was periodically sidetracked by the puzzling questions his discovery posed: How did a tombstone wind up propped against a fire hydrant on East Fourth Street between Avenues C and D? And who was Hinda Amchanitzky?...