Crocker Monument

Sharing the top of Mountain View Cemetery’s Millionaires Row are the Merritt Mausoleum and the Crocker Monument. The circular Crocker monument, constructed in 1888, was built in the Pavilion style. These round “tholos” forms were inspired by temples and tombs of Greco-Roman antiquity. The smooth sides of the mausoleum are contrasted by the rusticated stone blocks forming the base of the structure.

The Crocker mausoleum was designed by New York born architect Arthur Page Brown. Brown studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris before working for the prestigious New York architecture firm of McKim, Mead and White. He moved to California in 1889. In 1893, he won the design competition for the California Building at the Chicago Columbian Exposition then designed the famous Ferry Building in San Francisco in 1896. Brown’s life was cut tragically short by a carriage accident later in 1896.

Following Charles Crocker’s death in 1888, his wife Mary commissioned Brown, then living in New York, to build this tomb for her husband. Charles Crocker was one of the “big four” who built the western portion of the transcontinental railroad. Ironically, like Brown, Crocker was also killed in a carriage accident.  Curiously, since the monument is solid granite, none of the Crockers are entombed inside. Nevertheless, cemetery records indicate that somewhere around the monument lie the mortal remains of Charles Crocker, his wife Mary, their son George and George’s wife, Emma.
Text and photo © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page

[address cemetery=”Mountain View Cemetery” street=”” city=”Oakland” state=”California” zip=”94611″]

Flood Mausoleum

The Flood mausoleum is a restrained, but elegant example of Beaux Arts symmetry in the form of a Greek temple. Twenty-eight ionic, polished granite columns support the intersecting cross-gables.

Although it is not documented, it is likely that Augustus J. Laver, who designed Flood’s Menlo Park estate, “Linden Towers” and his San Francisco mansion, also designed his mausoleum. Well heeled citizens like James Flood, frequently employed the same architect to design their private residences as well as their mausoleum.

Constructed in 1889, the Flood mausoleum was originally located in the Laurel Hill Cemetery in San Francisco. In 1905, the entire mausoleum, as well as Flood’s remains, were moved 10 miles south to Cypress Lawn Cemetery, in Colma. The mausoleum escaped the disastrous 1906 earthquake unharmed. It remains today, one of the most beautiful examples of funerary architecture in Cypress Lawn Memorial Park.

James Clair Flood (1826-1889), the son of Irish immigrant parents, arrived in California in 1849. He teamed up with a fellow Irishman, William O’Brien, and opened a saloon in San Francisco. The two men bought up Nevada mining claims from their saloon patrons. With some astute speculation, they soon found themselves in control of the vast Comstock Lode. Four years after quitting the saloon business Flood was earning more than $500,000 a month. Flood established the Nevada Bank in 1875, which after his death merged with the Wells Fargo Bank.
Text and photo © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page

[address cemetery=”Cypress Lawn Memorial Park” street=”1370 El Camino Real” city=”Colma” state=”California” zip=”94014″]

Colton Mausoleum

The Colton Mausoleum is a fine example of the eclecticism of designer Fulgenzio Seregni. Seregni, a native of Milan, Italy, billed himself as a “designer of artworks of a memorial nature”. He designed mausoleums all over the United States. Here in Oakland’s Mountain View Cemetery, in addition to the Colton mausoleum, he designed two Gothic Revival mausoleums and numerous monuments.

For the Colton mausoleum he chose a basic Greek Revival Temple style with Corinthian columns and pilasters complete with twin sphinxes to guard the Colton remains. Although sphinxes and Greek Revival Temples are considered pagan architectural forms they continue to be among the most popular types of funerary architecture.

Mrs. David D. Colton had this mausoleum built for her husband following his death in 1878. Colton was legal counsel to the “big four” of transcontinental railroad fame, sometimes known as the big four and one-half with the addition of Colton. When Colton died, his wife tried to collect on the shares of the railroad that she now owned and the railroad gave her a very low valuation of those shares. She sued and the resulting trial, which she did not win, nevertheless exposed the wide spread corruption and political bribery exercised by the railroad.

As a statement of her continuing grief, she had the mausoleum built in a location that would be plainly visible from her Nob Hill residence across the bay in San Francisco.
Text and photo © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page

[address cemetery=”Mountain View Cemetery” street=”” city=”Oakland” state=”California” zip=”94611″]

Mary Baker Eddy Monument

Mary Baker Eddy (July 16, 1821 – December 3, 1910) was a religious leader and author who was responsible for founding the Christian Science church. She lived her entire life in the New England region of the United States. Her enigmatic personality was both reviled and revered, approaching sainthood in the eyes of some, while others believed her to be a charming, albeit hypocritical, huckster. Upon her passing, The Boston Globe lauded her saying, “She did a wonderful – an extraordinary work in the world and there is no doubt that she was a powerful influence for good.”

• Early Years and Influences
• The Spiritual Journey of Mary Baker Eddy
• Mount Auburn Cemetery
• A Legacy in Perpetuity: The Mary Baker Eddy Mausoleum

Early Years and Influences

Mary Baker Eddy was born in the summer of 1821 in Bow, New Hampshire. Her father, a strict religious practitioner, ensured the family lived by the prevailing Puritan values of the day, doing honest but hard work each day of the week, except Sunday, the day of rest. Baker Eddy’s mother took on the more traditional role of caretaker and nurturer.

Baker Eddy often took ill as a child, experiencing fainting spells and severe and debilitating bouts of energy depletion. In later years, psychiatrists and historians attributed these episodes to being psychosomatic in nature, perhaps as a response to the strict and cool manner in which her father parented Baker Eddy and her siblings.

Baker Eddy was regarded as being exceptionally intelligent and headstrong. The bulk of her early education was arrived at by self-teaching, reading texts and studying with her brothers who were receiving a more formal education. After some time, Baker Eddy’s father relented, enrolling her in a local school.

Not long after leaving school, Baker Eddy, who had always had a strong interest in the concepts and study of spirituality, found a mentor in Phineas Quimby, a man who professed that medicines and physicians were no better for curing suffering and illness than faith and our own minds. The teachings of Quimby profoundly affected Baker Eddy and are widely regarded as the foundational ethos for the church she later founded.

The Spiritual Journey of Mary Baker Eddy

Before finally founding the Christian Science church, Baker Eddy sought enlightenment down several non-traditional paths. She was alleged to have dabbled in Spiritualism, a practice that, in the 1800’s was viewed akin to heresy. Rumors abounded the Baker Eddy both attended and even sometimes led seances in parlors in and around Boston, Massachusetts.

Baker Eddy also looked eastward for influence, appropriating much of the Bhagavad-Gita, a 700-verse Hindu scripture, in her own book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. This best selling tome was criticized for its direct plagiarism of Baker Eddy’s mentor, Phineas Quimby, as well as its strikingly similar message to that of the Bhagavad-Gita as well.

Writing in his own work entitled Christian Science, noted American satirist Mark Twain shared his opinion on the quality of Baker Eddy’s authorship:

“Largely speaking, I have read acres of what purported to be Mrs. Eddy’s writings, in the past two months. I cannot know, but I am convinced, that the circumstantial evidence shows that her actual share in the work of composing and phrasing these things was so slight as to be inconsequential. Where she puts her literary foot down, her trail across her paid polisher’s page is as plain as the elephant’s in a Sunday-school procession. Her verbal output, when left undoctored by her clerks, is quite unmistakable.”

While it is patently clear Baker Eddy had her detractors in her life, her influence cannot be denied. Today there exist approximately 1,700 Christian Science churches in 76 countries. In each of those communities, the congregants present the Christian Science Reading Room as a public service. Baker Eddy’s book, despite the questions surrounding its authorship, has remained a best seller for decades and was listed among others as one of the “75 Books By Women Whose Words Have Changed The World,” by the Women’s National Book Association.

Mount Auburn Cemetery

The Mount Auburn Cemetery is a sprawling memorial garden in a pastoral setting located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Buried and interred there are several prominent individuals, including poets, dignitaries, and influential public figures. The grounds are open to the public for walking tours and include several miles of peaceful walking paths.

Mount Auburn, along with the Green-Wood Cemetery located in Brooklyn, New York, was one of the early influences on Frederick Law Olmsted for the design and creation of one of the most significant public spaces ever made, New York City’s Central Park. Olmsted realized the throngs of visitors each year to the park-like cemeteries exposed the need and desire for grand, open spaces in the rapidly growing cities of the early and mid 1800’s.

A Legacy in Perpetuity: The Mary Baker Eddy Mausoleum

Mary Baker Eddy was buried at Mount Auburn in an open-air mausoleum that was designed by the renowned New York City-based architect Egerton Swarthout. According to Douglas Keister, the design of the mausoleum derives from a tholos form of a circular colonnade which consists of eight columns each 15 feet in height. Swarthout explained why he included no roof, saying there should be “nothing between the grave and sky but flowers.”

Widely regarded as the finest example of the granite carver’s craft, Mary Baker Eddy’s mausoleum is constructed entirely of Bethel, Vermont white granite and features carved floral representations of the morning glory and the wild rose. The wild rose was Mary Baker Eddy’s favorite flower, and the morning glory was selected for symbolically opening to light and closing to darkness. Also carved into the mausoleum is the lamp of wisdom and a sheaf of wheat.

Mary Baker Eddy was a complex and, at times, perplexing individual. Her impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals cannot be denied or discounted. Her final resting place at Mount Auburn Cemetery provides a dignified legacy representative of the extraordinary life she lived.

Text and photo © Douglas Keister Visit Doug’s Author Page

[address cemetery=”Mount Auburn Cemetery” street=”580 Mount Auburn Stree” city=”Cambridge” state=”Massachusetts” zip=”2138″]