If you want to be remembered as a man of taste, you should be entombed in the Parthenon, or something very like it. This is very similar, but not identical, to the Eaton mausoleum in the Homewood Cemetery. Both are very correct Doric temples, bearing an even stronger resemblance to the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens than to the Parthenon. Alexander McBurney Byers was a titan of the iron industry, which you would never guess from this pristine white temple.
Here is another Doric temple, not extraordinary but in good taste. One of the best things about it is the site: the mausoleum sits in front of tall evergreens that make a deep green curtain behind it. According to cemetery records, Charles Meyran, the earliest occupant, was buried in 1891.
A small but tasteful mid-twentieth-century mausoleum, probably a dealer’s stock model. The doors and the carved relief are pleasingly decorative; but there was something about mausoleums in this era that made them look a little like federal office buildings. Or perhaps we should say that there was something about federal office buildings that made them look like mausoleums.
The only Vorwerck mentioned in the cemetery records is Martha Vorwerck, who died in 1945. She was buried three days after her death, so (assuming this is her resting place) this mausoleum was probably put up while she was still alive.
The only private mausoleum in the cemetery, this is not quite as grand a construction as some of the ones in the great city cemeteries. But it must have impressed the neighbors in this little country town.
The epitaph is a version of a poem commonly associated with valentines:
Each little flower shall sweetly say,
In absence oft I do regret thee;
And though a wanderer far away,
Yet never do I once forget thee.
A rustic mausoleum that has, as usual, lost its bronze door; but this one has not been bricked up yet. You may, if you please, walk right in and say hello to the Hornings. You will, we trust, excuse them if they do not return the greeting.
