The Vanity of Human Wishes

Last Monday’s Times carried an article by James Barron entitled: “On the Market, a Building that Sleeps Eight, Forever.” He was referring to a Greek revival building with a “top-quality granite exterior, marble interior, high ceiling,” and a window designed by a famous artist. It is, in short, a mausoleum at the Woodlawn Cemetery. Built for the Methodist bishop Charles Henry Fowler, who died in 1908 and whose remains were transferred to a cemetery in New Jersey in 1956, it was sold to Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, the eminent long-time minister of the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan.

Dr. Peale never occupied the mausoleum. After his purchase, he lived for another forty years or so, and because by that time his life and that of his wife had become centered in Pauling, New York, they were buried there. . The Peale mausoleum is now for sale at an asking price of $750,000. This doesn’t include the cost of removing the Peale name and putting up your own.

But why would you want to buy a second-hand mausoleum or build a new one for that matter? If you want to display your wealth, there will usually be a grander tomb to eclipse it. The owners of another mausoleum at Woodlawn, for example, are asking $4.1 million for theirs. Besides, how many people will visit the cemetery and view your temple of conspicuous consumption? If you want to glorify yourself, you should consider the grand equestrian statues of Civil War heroes scattered around Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza. Their names, even if noticed, are unrecognized by the passerby. If you want to construct a memorial for the ages, note that the magnificent third century BCE tomb of Mausolus, for whom all grand tombs take their name, now lies in ruins. And if you want to provide a secure resting place for your remains, remember Ozymandias. Better known as Ramesses the Great, his body resides in none of the three grand tombs which housed his body in succession but in a museum in Cairo. There anyone with the price of admission can gawk at it. The mighty are unlikely to despair.

But what of love as your motivation? What if you want to build a tomb not for yourself but for a loved one? The Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, said to have been heartsick at the death of his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal, built a monument to her memory, a structure of such beauty that millions flock to see it. If you can construct a tomb as outstanding as the Taj Majal, a building as lovely as a moonbeam, your love is likely to be seen for centuries, but even the Taj Mahal is likely to perish eventually, long after people have forgotten the names of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan.

As for me, I’d like my ashes to be scattered over Prospect Park, but that would be littering, unsightly and no doubt illegal. So I suppose my ashes will reside in an urn somewhere, until a descendant empties the receptacle and uses it as a vase for flowers. Until it too is thrown away.

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