Magicians aim to fix Houdini’s grave site
NEW YORK — Nestled next to the late Lewins, Blums and Levys in an old cemetery in New York City lies the final resting place of America’s most legendary magician, interred under a granite monument that bears his stage name in bold letters: Houdini.
It is an impressive tribute to the man who grew up as Ehrich Weiss and died on Halloween 1926 of complications from appendicitis. Over the years, the site has been venerated, vandalized, thieved and forsaken, but a group of magicians now wants to officially end the mystery of who will care for the grave.
“Houdini was a visionary. He was an inventor, an escape artist, and he gave back to society in so many ways,” said Dorothy Dietrich, a magician who runs a Houdini museum in Scranton, Pa. “It’s the least we can do to give back in some small way for all he’s given to us.”
Dietrich serves on a national Society of American Magicians committee working to raise money to restore Houdini’s grave site and allow for the permanent care of the monument at Machpelah Cemetery in Queens. It will cost about $1,200 annually to maintain the grounds, plus thousands more for restoration.
Houdini, the son of a rabbi, was at the height of his fame when he purchased 24 plots at the 6-acre graveyard located in a swath of open space crowded with cemeteries. His parents and siblings are buried there and his grandmother was exhumed in Hungary and taken to New York.
The only person not beside him is his wife, Bess. Machpelah is a Jewish cemetery, and she was buried at a Catholic graveyard in Westchester.
The grave site features an undulating bench known as an exedra, plus a Houdini bust, a vase, two benches and markers for each person buried. A mosaic emblem of the magician society adorns the site. Houdini was president when he died. Cemetery managers said that thanks to a steady stream of gawkers, the grave is usually stuffed with wands and other trinkets — plus refuse.
They have done their part over the years to keep up the grave site, but it’s their job to look out for all the dead — not just the famous dead.
“I must respect all of the families there,” said manager David Jacobson. “It’s a sacred place for everyone there.”
Most of Houdini’s relatives have long since died and those left don’t have extra money to fund the upkeep, Dietrich said. The plot has been cared for over the years by fans like Dietrich, who used her own money to mold and replace a broken bust and who travels to the cemetery to prune and clean.
Dietrich took up the mantle after the local magician society chapter had a dispute with the cemetery and stopped paying annual fees.
Depending on who tells it, spiteful cemetery managers were unwilling to work with Houdini fans and shuttered the site on the anniversary of his death. Or, magicians drumming up publicity for an annual Halloween grave site ritual known as a “broken wand” ceremony also unwittingly brought vandals who trashed the site until Machpelah managers started locking the gates on Oct. 31 somewhere in the mid-1990s.
Over the years, the bust was smashed or stolen at least twice. Benches at the plot perimeter were broken and markers for Houdini’s siblings Leopold and Gladys were damaged.
The bad blood was captured in articles where cemetery managers were falsely accused of grave robbing and magicians were falsely accused of pilfering funds donated by David Copperfield to fix the grave site benches.
But that’s all over now, said David Bowers, head of the Houdini grave site restoration committee. He said the national magician society — not the local chapter — is working with Dietrich and the cemetery to pay for the upkeep and plans to clean and re-caulk the granite, give the mosaic a face-lift and fix the damaged markers.