Doug Keister’s Blog

Harbeck Mausoleum

John H. Harbeck certainly had an interesting life as well as a contentious life and afterlife. His father, William H. Harbeck, was a founding partner of a substantial warehousing empire on Furman Street in Brooklyn known as the Harbeck Stores. John Harbeck reaped the rewards of that business, made investments of his own including ones in Colorado and railroad stocks, and led a rather opulent life thanks to his comfortable financial situation. In 1870, he met one Caroline Montgomery who claimed she was about to be divorced from her scallywag of a husband, Andrew Montgomery. John’s and Caroline’s hearts soon swooned, and, by 1871, John installed her as his wife at his upscale home on West 55th Street. Caroline was his “wife,” thanks to a far-from-binding oral agreement.

Sandy the Dog Mausoleum

A Man’s Best Friend Goes Out in Style. Let’s get one thing straight from the get-go: man’s best friend is the dog. With all due respect to the pet proclivities of lovers of ferrets, finches, hamsters, horn toads, pythons, parrots, cats, and other critters, no other creature holds a candle to the dog. Dogs rule. Just ask Tony LaMura.

Tony LaMura comes from a family of thoroughbreds—Thoroughbred Italians—100% Italian on both sides, with lots of Emestinas, Fedricos, Giuseppis, Assuntas, and Anthonys. When Tony was a kid, he had a purebred German Shepherd with the fitting name of Major. Young Tony became very attached to Major, but Major died when Tony was 12, and the young boy was devastated. Not long after Major died, Tony asked his mother if they could get another dog, but his mother said, “No,” not out of meanness but out of compassion for Tony. She just didn’t want to have him go through the inevitable loss of another pet. “You get too attached,” she told him.

The Urban Mausoleum

It is a common, but understandable, misconception that cemeteries in large urban areas like New York City no longer have space available for constructing new private mausoleums.

Built for Eternity

Before my book on mausoleums Going Out in Style: The Architecture of Eternity was published in 1997, I was known as “America’s most noted photographer of historic architecture.” My title was due in large part to three books on Victorian architecture, two books on Arts and Crafts architecture and numerous magazine assignments documenting historic architecture inside and out. My interest in funerary art and architecture, and mausoleums in particular, was a natural progression. Mausoleums, to put it simply, are the most unspoiled resource of historic architecture. If you want to see pure examples of a style of architecture, journey to a cemetery and study its mausoleums.

Unlike residences and commercial buildings that usually have a finite lifespan, mausoleums are essentially built for eternity. In the course of my architectural studies, I decided to research the age of the oldest buildings in the world. Scholars may debate what constitutes a building, but the oldest man-built structure in the world is generally recognized as Barnenez, a “passage grave” in what is now the Brittany region of northern France. Barnenez dates to around 4850 BC.

Inside the Chapel

The most most preferred mausoleum building material is granite. That is certainly the way it should be. When building for eternity, practically nothing outlasts granite. It is a good choice for mausoleum exteriors because of its durability and hardness as well as its uniform color.

When selecting materials for mausoleum interiors, especially chapel mausoleums, other not-as-durable materials may be worth considering. While marble may not age well in the weather, it often works well on interiors, especially when a range of textures and colors is desired. The same goes for other masonry materials such as limestone. Marble, of course, has been the preferred material for sculpture, but it is best used when the sculpture is indoors. Again, granite trumps marble for exterior use.

Classical Revival Mausoleum: Mausoleum Styles and Architecture

The most common type of mausoleum architecture is Classical Revival. It is easy to identify by its columns and column capitals, which are classified into “orders,” generally recognized as Doric, Tuscan, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite. Doric and Tuscan architecture developed about the same time, but most scholars think that Doric, despite having more ornamentation, emerged first.

Doric architecture can be divided into Grecian Doric and Roman Doric. The best known Doric building is the Parthenon, built in Athens around 450 B.C.. Doric architecture is identified by its tapering, fluted columns that rise directly from the base (stylobate) and are crowned by plain capitals. Roman Doric columns are also fluted and crowned by plain capitals, but have a base.

Uniquely Funerary: Pierd’Houy Family Mausoleum

When I was photographing and researching my first cemetery book, Going Out in Style: The Architecture of Eternity, I kept coming across mausoleums that didn’t neatly fit into any definite architectural style. These eclectic mausoleums might have some Gothic spires, Classical Revival columns, and Egyptian symbolism. I started to call this odd and sometimes wonderfully whimsical architecture “Uniquely Funerary”. You just aren’t likely to find this style of architecture anywhere else but a cemetery, or perhaps a fanciful theme park. Indeed, Uniquely Funerary mausoleums and funerary structures are a triumph of form over function. They may be thought of as a delightful marriage of sculpture and architecture.

The Taj Mahal: A Tomb For Two For Love

We’ve all heard the line before: You’ve gotta go see a certain movie, a tourist site, a cathedral, a … well… insert whatever it may be. What often happens? You see/hear/experience whatever it may be, and you think, “Well that was nice, but it didn’t really knock my socks off.” I think I’d rather hear from someone, “Hey, why don’t you check out (insert item here), I think you might like it.” Then at least my expectations aren’t too high.

However, if you ever get a chance to see the Taj Mahal in person, go! It is truly SPECTACULAR. Not only is it one of the most recognizable buildings in the world, it is also a mausoleum. A tomb built for two.

In Search of Jesus’ Tomb

It is probably next to impossible to precisely plumb what tomb people most want to see. The Taj Mahal and the Great Pyramid of Giza are certainly contenders. But the majority of people do not go to those places because they want to see a tomb. They go there because of the history and architecture.

However, there is one burial place where people go specifically to see a tomb. The name of the person who supposedly occupied this tomb just might be the most recognizable name on Earth: Jesus of Nazareth.

Travelers to the Holy Land often hear the phrase ‘the tradition is.’ There are so many layers of history, buildings, events, and people that the whereabouts of specific historic sites have been lost to the ages. To be sure, the Mount of Olives, Garden of Gethsemane, the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River, and Mount Zion are verifiable places. But other places are often referred to as the ‘traditional site’ such as the traditional site of the Last Supper and the traditional site of Jesus’ birth. Other sites have more than one traditional location. Such is the case with Mary’s place of ascension and Jesus’ tomb and place of ascension.

2000 Year Old Mausoleum to Receive $3 Million for Restoration in Creative Trade

I can’t count the number of times that, when I tell people about my appreciation of mausoleums and cemeteries, I hear, “What a waste of money. What are they good for? People ought to be assigning money in their wills toward art and things that benefit humanity.”

After they have finished their all-things-funerary diatribe, I pause to collect my thoughts. Then, with one eye closed and eyebrow raised, I ask them what they think about the Pyramids of Egypt, the Taj Mahal in India, the Terra-cotta Warriors in China, Westminster Abbey in England, and the Pantheon in Rome.

As I continue to rattle off well-known mausoleums and burial locations around the world, they usually hold up their hand imploring me to stop. They get my point. The fact is many of the most popular tourist destinations in the world are mausoleums. They are not only a testament to the entombed person but timestamps that often tell us, in great detail, what the architectural and social mores were at the time they were constructed.

The latest permutation of the staying power of mausoleums is that one of them has now become a bargaining chip: the restoration of the Mausoleum of Augustus in Rome for art. Augustus was the first emperor of Rome. He ruled as emperor for 41 years, dying at age 75 in 14 AD.