A Resting Place To Die For

Written by Matt Elzweig on August 21, 2007. Posted in Posts.

Leona Helmsley is going out in style. Her new digs are a $1.4 million mausoleum in suburban Sleepy Hollow, next to her late husband Harry Helmsley. Made of granite, the 1,300 square-foot mausoleum features a stained-glass recreation of the Manhattan skyline and Doric columns.

Helmsley, who eventually controlled her husband’s hotels and all of his vast holdings, died of heart failure at home in Greenwich Connecticut on August 20th. She was 87.

Depending on who you ask, she was either “The Queen of Mean,” the name that became forever associated with her during the trial that ended with her 1989 tax fraud conviction—she served 21 months of a four-year prison sentence—or she was a pioneer who broke barriers by rising to the top of the then male-dominated real estate industry—or both.

Harry Helmsley was originally buried in a family mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. But three years ago a public mausoleum went up, blocking his “view.” An irate Helmsley, who was already a millionaire when she married her husband, sued the cemetery, but ultimately moved Harry’s and their son, Jay Panzirer’s remains to Sleepy Hollow in 2005.

Photo courtesy of ckirkman on Flickr