Gamichon Family Tomb
Gamichon Family Tomb
Division 2
Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris
Little seems to be known about the Gamichon family or Marcel Grouillet, the creator of the draped female marble sculpture at the entrance to the tomb. The tomb appears in many early twentieth century postcards of Père-Lachaise with the caption “La Douleur” (The Sorrow). The tomb is tucked away in the southwest corner of Division 2 and often escapes the attention of visitors. It is certainly worth a short detour. Nothing else in Père-Lachaise is quite like it.
Look closely and you’ll see the names of many members of the Gamichon family softly and almost unnoticeably etched into the rough stone. Architecturally the tomb is closest to a grotto, a cave-like structure usually seen in Catholic cemeteries. The most famous grotto in the world is in Lourdes. Cave-like structures can also be interpreted as homage to Jesus’ tomb.
Text and copy © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page
[address cemetery=”Père Lachaise Cemetery” street=”16 Rue du Repos ” city=”Paris” country=”France” zip=”75020″]
Nicolas Frochot Mausoleum
Nicolas Frochot
March 20, 1761-July 29, 1828
Division 37
Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris
Nicolas Frochot is remembered as a man who improved things. Born into a Bourgeois family he entered into what can best described as a career of public service. At age 28 he was elected député des États généraux and was responsible for compiling and airing grievances. Frochot was imprisoned during the Terror but released after the fall of Robespierre. After his release, he held a series of government posts before being appointed prefect of the Seine. In that capacity he instituted a number of social reforms concerning prisons, hospitals, and abandoned children. He also took measures to improve roads, bridges and other aspects of Paris’ infrastructure.
Frochot may be best known as the man who negotiated the sale of the land that established Père-Lachaise cemetery, as well as the land that became Montmartre cemetery, Montparnasse cemetery, and Passy cemetery. He brokered the transfer of the remains of Héloïse and Abélard, Molière, and La Fontaine to Père-Lachaise in 1817. His classical revival mausoleum was designed by Nicolas Bernard Raggi (1790-1862). It is awash with funerary symbolism including a draped urn, hourglass with wings, inverted torches, and two sorrowful bas-reliefs. Both a street and an avenue in Paris are named after Frochot.
Text and copy © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page
[address cemetery=”Père Lachaise Cemetery” street=”16 Rue du Repos ” city=”Paris” country=”France” zip=”75020″]
Thomas Durant Mausoleum
Thomas Durant Mausoleum
February 26, 1820–October 5, 1885
Green-Wood Cemetery
Brooklyn, New York
Thomas Clark Durant’s mausoleum is slightly tucked into a hillside. A large granite door tells viewers that there is no need to linger, that there is no need to try to peek inside; the mausoleum’s interior is not viewable, not even a peephole view. It is an odd testament to an enthusiastic man who was a master of publicity.
Thomas Durant was born in Lee, Massachusetts. He went to Albany Medical School, obtained a degree, and served for a time as a professor of surgery. But he had his sights set on bigger things. After working for his uncle’s grain exporting company, he realized that there was a great need for a better transportation system that led him into the railroad industry.
He became embroiled in a lawsuit over the construction of a bridge, and hired a young attorney named Abraham Lincoln to defend him. That association became beneficial when Abraham Lincoln became president a few years later, and, in 1862, awarded Durant’s company the Union Pacific a major part of the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. Construction of the railroad was hampered by the Civil War but, never one to miss an opportunity to profit from other’s woes, Durant made a financial killing by smuggling in cotton from the Confederate States.
When railroad construction kicked into high gear after the Civil War, Durant staged a number of publicity events to draw attention to the project and to garner investors. The events culminated with Thomas Durant wielding the sledgehammer that drove the Golden Spike into its resting place at Promontory, Utah, finishing the Transcontinental Railway.
The mausoleum was not completed until almost three years after Durant’s death, and the interior is rarely seen. Rather than the standard utilitarian stone box with crypts, the mausoleum’s interior is an architectural gem. It sports polished granite columns, two rooms, three statues, and a high-relief frieze panel. Art critic Effie Brower, who seemed to have an opinion on most of Green-Wood’s monuments, commented on one of the statues holding a wine goblet in her book Greenwood Leaves, “What does it mean? . . . Can it be that he who lies beneath was a victim [of drinking] or was he saved by faith from the ‘cup.”
Text and copy © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page
[address cemetery=”Green-Wood Cemetery” street=”500 25th St ” city=”Brooklyn” state=”New York” zip=”11232″]
Walden-Myer Mausoleum
Walden-Myer Mausoleum
Forest Lawn Cemetery
Buffalo, New York
Constructed in 1857, the Walden-Myer mausoleum is basically Romanesque in form, but there are a number of curious details. Although the structure’s rough ashlar masonry, double columns, cavernous arched doorway, and square shape make it appear formidable and cold, carved acanthus leaves that flank the steps and a bulbous sphere crowning the top add a touch of whimsy.
Although the round orb atop the mausoleum symbolizes God’s sovereignty over heaven and Earth, ironically, the globe presaged the career of Albert James Myer (1829-1880). When Myer traveled in the west in the1850’s, he observed Indians signaling each other by waving pieces of cloth. He applied what he had seen and invented the ingenious “wig-wag” system of signaling. In 1860 he became the Army’s first officer of the newly formed Signal Corps.
After the Civil War, the Signal Corps became responsible for weather reporting, and Myer helped popularize a system of predicting the weather by using telegraph reports assembled from different areas of the country. The Weather Service, administered by the Signal Corps, was officially inaugurated by an act of Congress in 1870, and remained a function of the Army until 1890 when the civilian Weather Bureau was established.
Albert J. Myer’s alias “Old Probabilities” was one of the best known personages in the United States in the 1870’s. Every day in the 1870’s, most major newspapers would carry a note supplied by Myer’s department which would read, “it is probable that….,” followed by that day’s prediction.
Also sharing the mausoleum with Albert Myer are his wife, Catherine Walden, four of their six children, and members of the Walden family including Catherine’s father, Ebenezer Walden (1777-1857), Buffalo’s first lawyer, a Buffalo judge, mayor, and real estate developer, and, presumably, the de facto builder and first occupant of the mausoleum. According to the Maine Granite Industry Historical Society, the monument is made of Hallowell granite.
Text and copy © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page
[address cemetery=”Walden-Myer Mausoleum” street=”1411 Delaware Ave” city=”Buffalo” state=”New York” zip=”14209″]
Sarnoff Mausoleum
David Sarnoff
February 27, 1891–December 12, 1971
Kensico Cemetery
Valhalla, New York
This bunker-like mausoleum is the final resting place for communications mogul David Sarnoff. He was born near Minsk, Russia into a poor Jewish family. His father immigrated to the United States, and, when he amassed enough money, he sent for his family. Nine-year-old David arrived in the United States in 1900. He began actively working in 1906 after his father became incapacitated with tuberculosis. In the fall of 1906, he got a job with the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America, and thus began a 60-year career in communications.
Sarnoff’s first major achievement was popularizing radio broadcasting. Until the early 1920’s, radio broadcasting was seen as a point-to-point technology not a point-to-mass-audience medium. Sarnoff’s coup was to broadcast a boxing match for his new employer RCA, Radio Corporation of America. Over 300,000 people listened, and sales of radios soared. He founded NBC, National Broadcasting Company, in 1926, and was also instrumental in the development of television. Spending eternity in the Sarnoff plot as well is RCA executive Robert Sarnoff (died 1997) and his wife, opera singer Anna Moffo (June 27, 1932–March 9, 2009).
Text and copy © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page
[address cemetery=”Kensico Cemetery” street=”271 Lakeview Avenue” city=”Valhalla” state=”New York” zip=”10595″]
Edwards Mausoleum
J. Gordon Edwards Mausoleum
June 24, 1867–December 31, 1925
Kensico Cemetery
Valhalla, New York
This one-of-a-kind mausoleum is the resting place of prolific silent film director J. Gordon Edwards. Canadian-born Edwards was one of the most prominent movie directors in the silent film era. He began his career as a stage actor and director, and then, in 1914, he made his film debut as director of St. Elmo. Not long after his debut, he became a director at Fox Film Corporation (Fox merged with Twentieth Century Pictures in 1935 to become Twentieth Century Fox). From St. Elmo in 1914 until his last film It Is the Law in 1924, Edwards directed over 50 films. He is best known for directing the original Cleopatra in 1917; The Queen of Sheba in 1921 that contained a enormous chariot race; and all of Theda Bara’s films from 1916 to 1919 (including her most noted role in Cleopatra). Theda Bara said Edwards was the kindest director she had ever worked with.
Edward’s wife Angela commissioned this mausoleum some years after Edwards’ death, and it is an homage to the exotic high-production period films Edwards directed. The twin minarets were originally wired for electricity. Inside the mausoleum are a number of movie props including chairs and a tiger skin rug. Often, Angela would visit the mausoleum and read while seated in one of the chairs. When she died in 1965, she directed that she be cremated and her ashes be mingled with her husband’s. Their ashes are sealed in one of the crypts inscribed with the last line (Canto XXXIII, line 145) of The Divine Comedy Part III Paradiso by Dante Alighieri: “L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stele,” or “The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.” J. Gordon Edwards is the grandfather of director Blake Edwards (July 26, 1922–December 15, 2010).
Text and copy © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page
[address cemetery=”Kensico Cemetery” street=”273 Lakeview Avenue” city=”Valhalla” state=”New York” zip=”10595″]
LaFarge Mausoleum
John LaFarge
March 31, 1835 – November 14, 1910
Green-Wood Cemetery
Brooklyn, New York
The mausoleum/vault of American artist John LaFarge (sometimes spelled La Farge) is tucked into a hillside just above Atlantic Avenue. LaFarge was born in New York City. He developed an interest in art during his early schooling (he was doing watercolors at age 6), but was steered toward a career in law. That began to change when he visited Paris where he stated associating with people involved in the arts. Upon his return to the United States, he began executing drawings and landscapes that showed a marked gift for combining color values. He started illustrating books, then moved into murals where he exhibited a vivid sense of composition and color. He was particularly drawn to religious-themed subjects, and was commissioned to do murals for churches in Boston and New York.
Some of LaFarge’s most well known works were those he executed in stained glass. He is credited with first using opalescent glass in stained glass windows, receiving a patent for his process on February 24, 1880. He ushered in what has become known as the “opalescent era” (1880-1920), where glass was produced in multicolored, textured sheets often with an iridescent sheen. Among his stained glass masterpieces are windows at the Trinity Church in Boston, St Paul’s Chapel at Colombia University in New York, First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia, Trinity Episcopal Church in Buffalo, and the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. LaFarge also designed mausoleum windows.
Text and copy © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page
[address cemetery=”Green-Wood Cemetery” street=”Willow Avenue” city=”New York” state=”New York” zip=”11218″]
Bergh Mausoleum
Henry Bergh Vault Style Mausoleum
August 29, 1811 – March 12, 1888
Green-Wood Cemetery
Brooklyn, New York
Henry Bergh was born into a wealthy family. After Henry graduated from college he worked in a shipyard owned by his father. His father sold the shipyard a few years later, and gave Henry a substantial inheritance, some of which he used to tour Europe with his new bride Catherine. While in Europe he observed that animals, and in particular work animals, were often treated better than they were in the United States. Bergh found his calling, and in April 1866 he founded the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). In 1874 he was instrumental in establishment of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and in 1878 of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
When Bergh died on March 12th 1888, his body needed to be put in the receiving vault in St. Marks Church in Manhattan until the roads could be cleared of snow. Three days later, the funeral procession, with Mayor Abram Hewitt as a pallbearer, and other luminaries including circus entrepreneur P.T. Barnum in attendance, made its way to Green-Wood. In 2006 a large bas-relief was installed at the base of Bergh’s pyramidal mausoleum. For the first time in over 100 years, the public was invited to bring their pets into Green-Wood.
Text and copy © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page
[address cemetery=”Green-Wood Cemetery” street=”Willow Avenue” city=”New York” state=”New York” zip=”11218″]
Kennedy Mausoleum
John Stewart Kennedy Mausoleum
January 4, 1830–October 30, 1909
Woodlawn Cemetery
Bronx, New York
John Stewart Kennedy was born in Glasgow, Scotland. Although he received little formal education, he educated himself and got a job as a clerk. At age 20, he was sent to the United States to represent an iron firm for which he was working. Shortly after his arrival, he went into business with banker Morris K. Jessup. Kennedy became an adept negotiator, and was a skilled reorganizer. He used those skills when he became one of the receivers of the Central Railroad of New Jersey in 1888. In later life, he became involved in a number of philanthropic causes, and his will stipulated over $30 million in bequests. John Stewart Kennedy has been called one of America’s “little-known rich men.” His drab-colored garden-variety Classical Revival mausoleum belies a spectacular interior ceiling.
Text and copy © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page
[address cemetery=”Woodlawn Cemetery” street=”517 E 233rd St” city=”Bronx” state=”New York” zip=”10470″]
Kiralfy Mausoleum
Imre Kiralfy
1845-April 27, 1919
Green-Wood Cemetery
Brooklyn, New York
Imre Kiralfy was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire city of Pest, now Budapest, Hungary, in 1845. He was the oldest of seven children born to Jacob Konigsbaum, a well-to-do clothing manufacturer, and his wife Anna (Rosa) Weisberger. The Jewish family suffered through the 1848 Hungarian Revolution. Young Imre showed a talent for the arts, and dancing in particular, making his debut as a Hungarian folk dancer at age four. He adopted the stage name Kiralfy. Eventually five of his six siblings joined him on stage.
The family moved to Berlin and then to Paris while the children performed in theatres in Britain, France, and the Low Countries. In 1872 Imre married Englishwoman Marie Graham (1851-1942) in New York. The couple had nine children, but only six survived into adulthood. The Kiralfy brothers produced extravagant stage shows with large chorus lines, elaborate costumes, and spectacular special effects, but, after a few years, the brothers split due to artistic differences.
Imre struck out on his own, producing shows in England and the United States. His best known productions were The Fall of Babylon, Nero, Columbus, and The Black Crook.
Assisted by his son Charles, Imre created a lavish spectacle, titled America, in Auditorium Theatre in Chicago to coincide with the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, or the Chicago World’s Fair. America grossed $900,000 in its seven-month run. Returning to London, Imre rebuilt the Earl’s Court exhibition grounds as a small-scale version of Chicago’s White City in 1893. In 1905 he began planning Great White City in the Shepherd’s Bush section of London. Built in a palatial oriental style, it opened in 1908 with the Franco-British Exhibition, and eventually tallied eight million visitors. Imre Kiralfy died in Brighton, England leaving £136,000 (about 8 million dollars today) in his will.
Text and copy © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page
[address cemetery=”Green-wood Cemetery” street=”Willow Ave” city=”New York” state=”New York” zip=”11218″]
