Gravely Speaking

Two cemeteries very far apart—Greenwood Cemetery in Phoenix, Arizona, and Crest Lawn Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia, have the exact same statue of a man standing next to a woman with his arm around her.

In Greenwood the statue (pictured above) sits atop a columbarium which is a place where urns are “stored” in a cemetery.  The word “columbarium” has a Latin root and comes from the word “columba.” Columba referred to housing for doves that was divided into compartments for their housing.

In Crest Lawn the statue (pictured below) sits atop a sarcophagus mausoleum.  A ‘sarcophagus” is defined as a stone coffin and, generally, these structures do not have windows and are partially above ground.

George Whittell, Jr.

September 28, 1881 – April 17, 1969

Elia Pascal Whittell

September 9, 1892 – May 1, 1977

George Whittell, Jr. was born rich—very rich.  His grandfather invested in real estate during the California Gold Rush and made a fortune.  Whittell made the decision not to enter the family business but to follow a life of leisure.  He had two failed marriages, both brief and to chorus girls.  His third marriage was to Elia Pascal, the nurse he met while wounded and serving in France as an ambulance driver.

Whittell pursued the life suitable to a multimillionaire, building a home near Lake Tahoe he named Thunderbird Lodge, and adding to his growing collection of Duesenbergs.  He was prescient about the Stock Market—taking out 50 million dollars of his investments out of the market only months before the crash which insulated him from the Great Depression.  Though, Whittell was considered a relatively private person, he did throw lavish parties in his home and on his 55-foot mahogany yacht, also bearing the name Thunderbird.  His lavish mausoleum in the Cypress Lawn Cemetery in Colma, California, is a testament to his fortune.

The Whittell Mausoleum is an example of the Egyptian Revival architecture found in many large urban cemeteries.  The Egyptian Revival was an architectural movement that swept the United States and Europe.  The movement in America was influenced by three separate events—the first was Napoleon’s defeat of Egypt in the 1790s.  Later Napoleon published the results of his scientific expedition, which was printed in serial form, the last released in 1826.  The second event was when the so-called “Cleopatra’s Needle” was erected in Central Park in New York on February 22, 1881.  Lastly, “Egypto-mania,” as some called it, reached fever pitch in November 1922 when King Tut’s tomb was discovered, and the news flashed around the world. The influence of the Egyptian Revival was reflected in buildings in the United States as early as the 1820s.  The revival was also found in American cemeteries in the 19^th century and on into the 20^th century. The obelisk, and ancient Egyptian form, is ubiquitous in cemeteries across the North American continent.

The mausoleum has many features of Egyptian temples such as the cavetto cornice that curves into a half circle at the top of the tomb.  Also, the torus molding at the bottom of the cornice and around the corners of the mausoleum are designed to emulate long bundled plants.   Another feature of Egyptian architecture are the heavy columns that flank the doorway with palm leaves at the top.

The Whittell Tomb also features a winged globe with uroei cavetto cornice above the doorway.  In this example, there are three sets of falcon wings that symbolize the king, the sun, and the sky.  The globe represents the Egyptian god, Horus.  The uroei, snakes, are waiting to strike.  They symbolize the king’s ability to ward off evil spirits.

The globe and uroei symbolism is repeated in the amulets around the necks of the sphinxes on the panels on the lower third of the bronze doors leading into the mausoleum.  The steps lead up to a pair of bronze doors that feature lotus flowers and buds.

The entryway is guarded by two large couchant sphinxes.  The most famous sculpture of a sphinx is the Great Sphinx of Giza outside of Cairo, Egypt.  In the Egyptian tradition the benevolent mythological creature has the head of a man and the body of a lion.  However, In the Greek tradition the sphinx is usually depicted as a woman, sometimes with wings.  This example is in the Greek tradition.  In addition to the gender difference, the Greek sphinx is considered a malevolent being.

The massive tomb gives one the sense of solemnity and a sense of eternity, just as the temples of the pharaohs.

Tucked away under some massive trees that form a canopy over a large part of the Dexter Family Mausoleum in the Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio, is a great Gothic Revival-style tomb.  The sandstone mausoleum was designed for the Dexter brothers by famed Queen City architect James Keyes Wilson and inspired by the Sainte-Chappelle Cathedral in Paris.  The tomb took four years to build between 1865 and 1869 at the exorbitant sum of $100,000, a staggering amount of money at the time.  The first Dexter to be buried in the family tomb was Edmund Dexter who died at the age of 61 in 1862.  Dexter was an English immigrant who made his fortune selling liquor in Cincinnati.  He was buried in the tomb in 1870.  Now nearly 20 family members are buried within the walls of the mausoleum.

The mausoleum was a curiosity from the beginning.  People who took their carriage rides through the cemetery slowed or stopped to view the ostentatious tomb.  The mausoleum has two distinct levels.  The upper level was created as a chapel measuring 12 feet wide, 30 feet long, and 34 feet high.  One of the features that makes Sainte-Chappelle so well-known are the magnificent stained-glass windows the recount the major events in the Bible from the Creation story to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Unfortunately, the chapel in the mausoleum was never completed so the stained-glass windows that had been planned for the chapel were never installed.  The lower section of the mausoleum houses the crypts.

The massive tomb has many features of the medieval cathedral from which it was inspired.  Typical of Gothic architecture, including Sainte-Chappelle, are the pointed arches which became popular in Western building designs during the 12^th Century.  Every window and nearly every door in the mausoleum do, indeed, have a pointed arch.  Visually the pointed arch is lighter and also allowed builders to create taller windows which gave the buildings an airy feeling.  In addition to the visual lightness, the pointed arch was stronger than the rounded arch which was popularized in Romanesque architectural designs.  The arches are highly decorated with multiple moldings giving the windows a delicate appearance.  Even though the moldings seem to be separate they are, in fact, carved together from the same blocks of stone—called voussoir blocks.

In addition to the decorative moldings each arched window has small decorative points projecting from the curves in the arch—this is known as cusping.  These are formed using small curves.  It is where these small curves meet and form a point or cusp.  Lastly, each window has a hood molding that forms at the side of the window and then culminates in the pointed arch.

Flanking both sides of the tomb are flying buttresses.  These highly decorative arches gave additional support to the walls within a building.  The buttresses were positioned at the points of greatest stress and added additional structural support.  Each of the flying buttresses are decorated with tall pinnacles which add weight to the buttress.  The connecting pieces between the buttresses and the building are referred to as flyers and even those are highly decorated with tracery and quatrefoils.

Even though the Dexter Family Mausoleum has deteriorated and many of the decorative elements, such as turrets, spires, crockets, and pinnacles, have decayed, the tomb remains a magnificent example of Gothic architecture and continues to be one of the most-sought after sights in the Spring Grove Cemetery a century and a half after it was completed.

If you view the four pinnacles on these flying buttresses in the picture above, only one is complete.  Tops of the pinnacles have fallen to the ground as well as the crockets.  Crockets are the protruding and highly-stylized foliage sculptural decorative pieces adorning the pinnacles.

Some of the pinnacles are missing entirely.

The sandstone in the tracery is beginning to deteriorate.