I was recently asked to create an ICONOGRAPHY TOUR of Elmwood Cemetery, which I happily agreed to do. I’ve spoken about iconography tours before, and admitted that they are the simplest tours to create and certainly the easiest to remember.
I’ve been thinking, though. I think I’ll surprise the cemetery foundation with a second tour—a MAUSOLEUM TOUR. I love family mausoleums and I think they are enough at Elmwood to enable me to create an hour-long tour. You can still buy family mausoleums, but they are extremely expensive. It shouldn’t be a surprise, though. A mausoleum is a structure designed to stand for years—hundreds of years, perhaps, so they must be made entirely of stone. There might be steel or iron pens and hidden support beams, but even the window frames are made out of stone. The FIREPROOF BUILDING in Charleston is a perfect example of a building built entirely out of stone. The building is home to the SC Historical Society and it was designed by Robert Mills, America’s first native-born architects.
I found this red and white marble and granite mausoleum on line. It can hold up to 32 people and the base price for this enormous mausoleum starts at $350,000. Others on the same website started at around $180,000.
Below are some of the mausoleums in Elmwood Cemetery. I need to go there and take a bunch of photographs to see if there are enough mausoleums to make up an entire tour. I wish some of you could go with me.
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