Richards Mausoleum
The magnificent Richards mausoleum is one of Oakland’s finest. As is common with much funerary architecture, it is a combination of architectural styles. The vertical emphasis and the bat-winged gargoyles are reminiscent of Gothic architecture while the rounded windows and doorway (with a hint of a Gothic peak) are more suited to Romanesque architecture. The mausoleum was designed by renowned funerary architect H. Q. French of New York City. He designed a very similar mausoleum in Oakwood Cemetery in Syracuse New, York. Robert H. Richards, who died on September 16, 1888, was the co-founder of Atlanta National Bank.
Text and photo © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page
[address cemetery=”Oakland Cemetery” street=”248 Oakland Avenue Southeast” city=”Atlanta” state=”Georgia” zip=”30312″]
Gheens Mausoleum
Charles W. Gheens (1837-1927) wasn’t about to take any chances when it came to selecting and building his final resting spot. Mr. Gheens apparently reasoned that death could come at any moment, so he planned ahead and built his mausoleum when he was only 37 years old. The May 7th, 1874, minutes of the Cave Hill Cemetery Board of Managers, stated: “Charles W. Gheens submitted drawings for a family vault to be erected on a lot selected for that purpose by Mr. Robert Ross, Superintendent, soliciting a permit therefore which was unanimously granted.” After completing construction of his mausoleum, Charles proceeded to live for another 53 years, dying at the ripe old age of 90 in New Orleans.
Gheens was engaged in a number of businesses, including interests in wholesale groceries, cement manufacturing and real estate. He contributed to many charities and actively supported the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
The Gheens mausoleum is a fine example of a Gothic Revival chapel mausoleum.
Text and photo © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page
[address cemetery=”Cave Hill Cemetery” street=”701 Baxter Avenue” city=”Louisville” state=”Kentucky” zip=”40204″]
Slark and Letchford Tombs
Both of these tombs, constructed in 1868, are classified under the broad umbrella of revival styles of architecture, with the Slark mausoleum leaning toward Classical Revival and the Letchford more in keeping with Gothic Revival forms. It looks like some giant stepped on the Letchford tomb and all that remains above ground is its steepled top. The Letchford mausoleum is reminiscent of the early Gothic Revival period that is also referred to as Medieval Revival. This style of architecture was popular in the mid nineteenth century and preceded the more exuberant Victorian Gothic styles.
The tombs were probably designed by Theodore Brune and erected by George Stroud. The styling is indicative of Brune’s work and both men were active in the funerary arts when these two mausoleums were constructed. Both Robert Slark (d. 1868), who was in the hardware business, and the W.H. Letchford family (the Letchford tomb contains the remains of Sarah Augusta Slark, d. 1868, wife of W.H. Letchford) were wealthy New Orleanians.
Cypress Grove Cemetery, better known as the Fireman’s Cemetery, was founded in 1840 by the Fireman’s Charitable and Benevolent Association.
Text and photo © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page
[address cemetery=”Cypress Grove Cemetery” street=”124 City Park Avenue” city=”New Orleans” state=”Louisiana” zip=”70119″]
Lewis Henry Morgan Mausoleum
Protruding from the hillside along Ravine Avenue in Rochester’s Mount Hope Cemetery is the High Victorian Gothic mausoleum of Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881). Like many sandstone mausoleums it is slowly eroding away, which only serves to enhance its brooding Gothic ornaments. The universal feature of all Gothic architecture is the pointed arch seen here in the entry and the fenestrations at the top of the twin steeples. The line of quatrefoils on the balustrade is also Gothic inspired.
Lewis Henry Morgan’s studies of the culture of the Seneca Indians earned him the title, “father of the science of anthropology”.
Mount Hope Cemetery, established in 1838, bills itself as America’s first municipal, Victorian cemetery. Among notables buried at Mount Hope are Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony and the Bausch and Lomb families.
Rochester’s most famous citizen, George Eastman, who founded the Eastman Kodak Company was cremated at Mount Hope, but his ashes lie beneath a giant cylindrical stone monument at the entrance to Kodak Park in Rochester.
Text and photo © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page
[address cemetery=”Mount Hope Cemetery” street=”1133 Mount Hope Avenue” city=”Rochester” state=”New York” zip=”14620″]
Niblo Mausoleum
Lions are, as everyone knows, ferocious beasts. The one guarding the Gothic Revival Niblo mausoleum seems to be toothless and rather forlorn. The Niblo mausoleum, comfortably nestled into the hillside and overlooking a small pond along Dale Avenue, is the picture of serenity and peace, but its history is anything but serene.
William “Billy” Niblo (1789-1878) took full advantage of his cemetery plot and liberally interpreted the idea that cemeteries were for the living. He hosted elaborate parties on the grounds in front of his mausoleum. These parties were an extension of his famous restaurant and theater complex on lower Broadway known as “Niblo’s Garden”. The Garden became well known as the site for plays he staged, featuring risque extravaganzas with bare legged dancers. One of his productions included three hundred babies marching and crawling across a stage. Perhaps the lion is a refugee from one of Niblo’s productions and that is why he looks so tired.
Text and photo © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page
[address cemetery=”Green-Wood Cemetery” street=”Willow Avenue” city=”Brooklyn” state=”New York” zip=”11218″]
Robinson Mausoleum
John Robinson built this mausoleum in 1874 for $35,000. Although the basic form of the mausoleum is a Gothic Revival cruciform, the heavily rusticated blue limestone walls reflect a Romanesque influence. To contrast with the rough surface of the blue limestone, the architect chose marble for the smooth surfaces of the mausoleum. Statues of Faith, Hope, and Charity frame the entry while the Archangel Gabriel, surmounting the dome, has his horn at the ready, to signal the heavens of the impending arrival of another Robinson.
The Robinson family owned Robinson’s Circus from 1824 to 1916 when they sold it to the American Circus. It was subsequently merged with Ringling Brothers.
Text and photo © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page
[address cemetery=”Spring Grove Cemetery” street=”Spring Grove Ave” city=”Cincinnati” state=”Ohio” zip=”45232″]
Bodmann Mausoleum
H.Q. French of New York designed this perfect little Gothic Revival mausoleum in the shape of a small chapel. There is an interesting play of smooth and rusticated stone, Gothic arches frame stained glass windows, a splash of rose colored granite is used on the columns to contrast with the gray stone. Quatrefoils on the upper windows and the door add balance. Adding to the fairy tale appeal of the Bodmann mausoleum is its beautiful setting in relationship to the environment.
Much of the beauty of Spring Grove Cemetery can be attributed to landscape architect Adolph Strauch. Strauch was born in 1822 in the Prussian province of Silesia. He studied botany and in 1838 took a job in the Imperial Gardens in Vienna. It was there that he developed his taste for well groomed lawns carefully framed by masses of trees and sculpted ponds. In 1848 he worked in London’s Royal Botanical Gardens and also guided foreign visitors through the Crystal Palace Exhibition. During one of those tours a man from Cincinnati, Robert Bonner Bowler, gave him his calling card and instructed Strauch to look him up if he was ever in Cincinnati. As luck would have it, in 1852, while Strauch was touring America he missed a train from Texas to Niagara Falls and found himself in Cincinnati. He looked up Bowler, who proceeded to introduce Strauch to a number of Bowler’s wealthy friends. In short order, Strauch was designing gardens and landscapes all over Cincinnati. It was only a matter of time, 1854 to be exact, before Strauch was offered the superintendent’s job at Spring Grove, a post he held until his death in 1883.
Text and photo © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page
[address cemetery=”Spring Grove Cemetery” street=”Spring Grove Ave” city=”Cincinnati” state=”Ohio” zip=”45232″]
Canda Mausoleum
Charlotte Canda
1828-February 3, 1845
If this monument looks like it’s not well thought out and a bit unprofessional, it’s because its basic form was designed by a teenage girl and not a trained architect or designer. When she was sixteen years old, Charlotte Canda, whose French parents ran a finishing school in New York City, sketched a design for a memorial for her deceased aunt. Little did young Charlotte know that she was actually sketching a draft of a monument for herself.
February 3rd, 1845 was a dark and stormy night, but the weather scarcely put a damper on Charlotte Canda, who was all aglow from her combination seventeenth birthday and coming out party. Charlotte and her father, Charles Canda gave one of her friends a carriage ride to her Waverly Place home in Manhattan, but as Charlotte’s father was escorting her friend to the door, the horses, perhaps afraid in the raging storm, bolted and ran. The carriage careened through the streets of Manhattan with Charlotte still inside. Alas, the carriage door had been left ajar and a short time later young Charlotte Canda tumbled out of the carriage and violently hit her head on the curb. Unaware of what had happened, Charles Canda searched for Charlotte then found his way home. Shortly after he arrived home he and his wife were summoned to the place where Charlotte was ejected from the carriage. The couple arrived and Charlotte succumbed in her father’s arms soon thereafter.
Charlotte Canda was interred at the Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Prince and Mott street in Manhattan. But soon thereafter her father took Charlotte’s sketch for her aunt’s grave, added a few flowery embellishments and turned it over to sculptor Robert Launitz to finish the design and craft a suitable monument. Most of the monument was executed by Launitz and fellow sculptor John Franzee. The result of the Canda/Launitz collaboration has the look of a Gothic Revival wedding cake. Over a century of exposure to the elements makes the ornaments on the marble monument appear to be melting. In the center of the monument and housed in a structure reminiscent of a grotto (a cave-like structure often seen in Catholic cemeteries), Launitz carved a statue of Charlotte in the party dress she wore that fateful night. The Canda monument is awash with symbolism. There are books (Charlotte was fluent in five languages), musical instruments she played, drawing tools she used for her sketches, down-turned torches signifying a life extinguished but one that still burns in the hereafter, parrots that were her pets and seventeen roses circling her head. Further symbolizing her age is the dimensions of the monument: it is seventeen feet high and seventeen feet long.
To add a touch of Romeo and Juliet to the Canda saga, her despondent fiancé, French nobleman Charles Albert Jarrett de la Marie (1819-1847) took his own life two years later. Charlotte had been buried on consecrated ground, but because Charles had committed suicide, he could not be buried with his bride-to-be. Charles lies in unconsecrated ground just off to the right under a small upright tombstone with his family’s coat of arms.
The entire ensemble cost upwards of $45,000 (over one-million dollars today). From the time of the monument’s erection in 1847 all the way through the 1850’s it was the most popular monument in Green-Wood (indeed, some accounts say it was the most popular monument in all America). For years crowds gathered around the monument on Sundays paying their respects to a life cut tragically short.
In 1899, Daniel Pelton published a collection of poems he had penned over the years. Page 48 of Greenwood: An Elegy Meditations Among The Tombs reads:
CHARLOTTE CANDA.
Turn’d to the left, I seek the intricate round,
Where Charlotte Canda decorates the ground,
Like Sirius, fairest of the starry line.
Yet death seems setting on that heavenly shrine;
All tombs around are in its splendor lost,
And all must bow before its mighty cost.
Yet who would envy, who would take her place,
Though not possessed of any wealth or grace.
The dread of pain, tenacity of life,
Increase with woe, and feed on mortal strife;
In vain the roses round her bloom,
Vain may the polished marble shine,
In vain the sculptured image show
Charlotte in life almost divine.
Still all is night beneath the gorgeous tomb,
And the black grave wears the same dismal gloom.
Thou lovely flower, too delicate for earth,
‘Tis only strange such beauty here had birth;
Supine it fell before the autumnal blast
To rise to Heaven when wintry storms have passed
Photo and text © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page
[address cemetery=”Green-Wood Cemetery” street=”Willow Avenue” city=”Brooklyn” state=”New York” zip=”11218″]
Bourne Mausoleum
Massive and imposing, the Bourne Romanesque Revival mausoleum looks like its here to stay. Ornamentation is almost nonexistent except for an oversized keystone worked into the doorway and a few round sandstone caps that look like stone porthole covers. Hallmarks of Romanesque Revival architecture as seen in the Bourne mausoleum are the heavy buttresses and a rounded arch with a deep reveal forming the entry.
Photo and text © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page
[address cemetery=”Mount Auburn Cemetery” street=”580 Mount Auburn Street” city=”Cambridge” state=”Massachusetts” zip=”2138″]
Queen of Heaven Mausoleum
Gothic Revival meets the 1950’s in this sandstone fortress located 15 miles west of downtown Chicago. The original architectural renderings, drawn in 1954 called for a much sleeker structure and did not include the multi-crocketed finials on the tower, but traditionalists prevailed and the towers and other ornamentation were added. After its construction in 1956, Queen of Heaven became quite popular among Catholics desiring above ground burial. By 1961, a new section, Queen of Angels was added and by 1964 came the final stage, Queen of All Saints. The mausoleum triplex contains over 33,000 crypts, 9000 of which remain to be filled.
Queen of Heaven mausoleum, the world’s largest Catholic mausoleum, contains a stunning display of artwork. Within its chapel, hallways and crypt rooms are 217 stained glass windows, dozens of statues, intricate mosaics, exotic hardwoods and 48 types of marble.
The Queen of Heaven chapel, Our Lady’s Chapel, looks like a regular chapel, but flanking the sides of the chapel are crypts. This style of entombment echoes earlier Christian times when church burial was preferred—the closer to the altar the better the chances of being inched toward heaven by the parishioners’ prayers. The large stained glass window in back of the altar commemorates the Coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven.
Photo and text © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page
[address cemetery=”” street=”1400 South Wolf Road, Hillside” city=”Chicago” state=”Illinois” zip=”60162″]
