Graceland Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois

Maud G. Kennedy Holmes 1876-1955

John S. Homes 1863-1931

The John Homes Mausoleum, erected in 1934, was designed by the Charles B. Blake Company in the Art Deco style.  The mausoleum was built for Holmes, a successful real estate broker and his wife, Maud.  The horizontal lines and the geometric patterns are characteristic of the style.

Art Deco is a design movement from the 1920s that marked a break from the fluid and flowing Art Nouveau designs of the 1890s. The term ‘Art Deco’ is derived from the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, an exhibition of artists that showed their work in Paris in 1925.  Arts Décoratifs was eventually truncated to Art Deco.