In Death As In Life

Sooner or later everyone eventually decamps to the suburbs:

Leona Helmsley, for years the imperious head of a multibillion dollar real estate and hotel empire, will spend eternity inside a $1.4 million suburban mausoleum with a magnificent view, alongside her beloved husband Harry.

“You know what they say: location, location, location,” said Philip Zegarelli, mayor of the quiet Westchester County town where Helmsley will be buried this week. “It’s very nice setting, well picked and well positioned.”

The ornate granite mausoleum boasts 1,300 square feet, with a dozen Doric columns and stained glass windows recreating the Manhattan skyline — including the Empire State Building, once the crown jewel of the Helmsley properties.

The Pocantico River gurgles past the Helmsley holding in the tree-lined Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, a historic 19th century locale where Washington Irving and Andrew Carnegie were joined last week by philanthropist Brooke Astor.

. . .

Harry Helmsley came to the northern suburb of Sleepy Hollow last year after Leona engaged in an ugly battle with Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, where the real estate magnate was originally buried in 1997. The expansive family mausoleum there was memorably described as a “tomb with a view.”

But the sweeping vista disappeared when a public mausoleum — potentially filled with those “little people” who paid taxes — went up nearby three years ago.

An irate Leona called the new construction “a disgrace,” and resolved to relocate the remains of her husband and her son, Jay Panzirer.

She purchased a piece of land in the cemetery, 14 miles north of New York City, to construct a new mausoleum — and quickly alienated her husband’s new, living neighbors. In typical take-no-prisoners style, a wooded section of the cemetery was stripped clean of trees in summer 2005.

The new construction lacked permits, and village officials quickly shut down the project, Zegarelli said.