By ANDREA ELLIOTT

They crammed the quiet block along East 81st Street with the fervor of a pilgrimage thousands strong, waving flags and white roses — her favorite — and chanting the verses of her songs like a Pan-American anthem.

Alternately dancing, weeping and bickering about who was first in a line that began forming at 10 the night before, Ecuadoreans, Puerto Ricans, Venezuelans,
Jamaicans, Cubans and others claimed Celia Cruz as their own. They swarmed yesterday at the Frank E. Campbell funeral home to bid her goodbye.

But as they passed through the doors to her open coffin, a hush fell. The Cuban queen of salsa lay in a swirl of cream velvet, her head crowned by a golden-blond
wig. Her eyelids shimmered with silver shadow, her hot-pink lips were tweaked in a faint smile.

"I love you, my love," said one young man before dramatically biting the white petals from his roses and blowing them over the black rope that separated the crowds
from her coffin. The security guards stiffened, and pushed him along.

"She looks like a sleeping doll," said one mourner, tears streaming from her eyes.

It was the final farewell for Ms. Cruz, who died at 77 last Wednesday, at her home in Fort Lee, N.J. In a postmortem tour, her body was flown first to Miami over
the weekend for a wake that drew thousands of mourners, and then back to New York.

Today, after a final viewing at the funeral home, a funeral Mass will be celebrated at St. Patrick's Cathedral, followed by burial at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

"We've already surpassed the amount of people who came to Judy Garland's wake," said Kevin Mack, the funeral home's general manager. He estimated, as did a
police officer on duty, that as many as 20,000 people attended Ms. Cruz's wake yesterday. "It is incredible," he said, adding that not nearly as many people attended
the public wakes of Ed Sullivan and Billy Martin.

Only the wake of Cardinal John J. O'Connor at St. Patrick's Cathedral in 2000 surpassed these crowds, Mr. Mack said. "But he had a three-day wake," he said.

Yesterday, when the doors to the funeral home chapel finally opened shortly after 11 a.m., the line of fans streamed slowly but steadily down the aisle and past Ms.
Cruz, who lay in a solid bronze coffin with her hands crossed, holding a golden crucifix under a sweeping Cuban flag. Many people cried, some made the sign of the
cross and a few danced.

Around the corner from the throng of fans, and past a mob of television crews, family members, friends and Latin musical stars of all ages trickled in.

Ms. Cruz's husband of 41 years, Pedro Knight, walked gingerly past the crowds, flanked by bodyguards, as fans screamed his name and Ms. Cruz's concert rallying
cry, "Azúcar!" which means sugar.

Among the visiting celebrities were old-timers like Johnny Pacheco and newer crossover stars, like Marc Anthony.

They sounded a similar theme: Ms. Cruz was always herself, on stage and off, a class act never to be repeated.

"It's just amazing how many people loved her, and they didn't know her like we did," said Linda Becquer, 33, the daughter of Ms. Cruz's youngest sister. "It's not
helping me realize she's gone. It's almost like another big show."

Mr. Pacheco, another legend of salsa who performed and recorded with Ms. Cruz and visited her on her deathbed, said he was deeply affected by the loss. "For the
last two or three days I haven't been able to sleep, thinking about her," he said in Spanish. "In the world, there are two very famous names, and they both start with
the same letters: Celia Cruz, and Coca-Cola."

The frenzy of fans left a few bystanders looking on with curiosity.

"Isn't it funny how they're carting her around?" said Joe Alberti, a bartender at the Stanhope Park Hyatt, as he peered out a shuttered window at the crowd on the
street. Mr. Alberti, 35, of Long Island, said, "They flew her down to Miami. They flew her back. Let's bury her already."

Shortly before the doors opened, people began to complain. They wanted a Colombian man named Julio, known for dancing in subways with a foam doll to Ms.
Cruz's music, to perform. Several men in suits finally agreed, and he blasted out a song that the crowd chanted in unison. "Ai, no hay que llorar, que la vida es un
carnaval!" they screamed. "Oh, no need to cry, life is a carnival."

"Her music was medicine to my ears," said Edwin Rosa, 37, of Manhattan, who joined the line at 5:30 a.m. and carried a laminated letter Ms. Cruz had sent him.

Mr. Rosa said, "It eased me through the hard times in my life."

Ms. Cruz drew a crowd as varied and unpredictable as her music. The old and the young, the healthy and the frail. The sane and the eccentric.

Early in the morning, the police found a woman standing next to the funeral home's 81st Street entrance, dressed as a patron saint and holding a Cuban flag.

She refused to move. Six hours later, there she stood, still as a statue. "We're still trying to figure that out," said a New York police officer standing guard nearby. "She said God sent her. We're like, 'O.K. She's not hurting anyone.' "

The night before, Ms. Cruz's hairdresser, Ruth Sanchez, had hand-stitched the glittering, beaded, eggshell-colored dress worn by Ms. Cruz. "I know she's very happy with the way she looks," she said.

Felicita Velasquez, 94, originally from Puerto Rico, was among the first to get a glimpse of the musical legend. Ms. Velasquez, who is now nearly deaf and confined to a wheelchair, had danced with Ms. Cruz nine times in her youth, said her nurse, Norma Cacho, 50, of the Bronx.

Jorge Plasencia, 29, a friend of Ms. Cruz's, watched silently as fans streamed down the aisle toward Ms. Cruz's coffin.

"We've got to move it quickly," he said. "They can't stop. Forty thousand people did not get to see her in Miami."

Minutes later, Omer Pardillo, Ms. Cruz's manager who has worked with her for 12 years, walked up and stood next to Mr. Plasencia. He, too, watched the fans as
they walked trancelike past her body.

"She's seeing it from up there," said Mr. Pardillo, 29. "She's directing it all from up there."