Queen of Heaven is the world’s largest Catholic mausoleum, and Resurrection Mausoleum is home to the world’s largest stained glass window. He himself would later be buried there.Īfter World War II, Harley’s firm would construct some of the best-known midcentury mausoleums, including Queen of Heaven Mausoleum in Chicago (1956-1964), Resurrection Mausoleum in Justice, Illinois (1969), the Mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery in Detroit, and Mausoleum of the Saints at Resurrection Cemetery, Mount Clemens, Michigan. Firm principle Alvin Harley (1884-1976) designed the mausoleum at White Chapel Memorial Park in Troy, Michigan in 1934. In fact, the Michigan architect firm Harley Ellis Devereaux notes in their history that community mausoleum projects helped the firm survive the Depression. The influx of community mausoleums was timely in that it coincided with shifts in cemetery management as a whole.Īlthough the community mausoleum movement is understood to have two distinct periods of development (before and after World War II, essentially), the construction of community mausoleums nationwide never truly ceased. The midcentury mausoleum would be much more at home within the Crescent City, with more than a dozen constructed. With the notable exception of Hope Mausoleum, none were built in the New Orleans area. The new, midcentury modern community mausoleums would deliver.Īs discussed in Part One, New Orleans cemeteries were overwhelmingly uninvolved with the early twentieth century community mausoleum. And they wanted it to be maintenance free, clean, and without the cobwebs of yesteryear. The public wanted a new modernity to separate from the modernity understood by their grandparents. Where before the community mausoleum was marketed as, in part, affordable, the appeal of affordability was no longer as necessary. The gargantuan technological leaps made to fight World War II had come home in the form of stronger concrete, bigger buildings, and an age of unparalleled American prosperity. A culture that forty years previous had held funerals in the home and generally eschewed embalming now understood the funeral home to be part of “tradition” and embalming to be essential to sanitation.īut the world had also changed.
In a way, the original allure of the community mausoleum had become part of American culture itself – the advertising had worked. But the American public itself had seen several generations, a Great Depression, and two World Wars go by. ( You can find Part One here.)īy 1950, the concept of the community mausoleum was forty years old. In both parts, we will examine New Orleans’ role in the community mausoleum movement. In this part, we examine their mid-twentieth century popularity from approximately 1950 to 1980. In this series, we examine the two periods of community mausoleum construction in the United States. Many that were constructed between the early 1960s and today remain in regular use, maintained by their owners and cherished by their stakeholders. Community mausoleums – multi-vault, indoor structures that house dozens or hundreds of burials – are ubiquitous in the American cemetery landscape.
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