Today, when most Americans are laid to rest on the grounds of a cemetery, their graves will be marked by small, flat stones or bronze markers. Hardly monuments at all. Back in the day, families of a certain means insisted upon paying tribute to their name, with large and often beautiful cemetery monuments and mausoleums. But for a handful, that day has long past. In an era where accounting departments run many cemeteries, the bottom line rises above all.
Less manpower is needed to trim around objects sticking out of the ground, and so on.
Precious money is therefore saved. The following pages will illustrate the golden era of cemeteries, when funereal customs were much more ritualised. When families spent as much to house the dead as the living. When stone cutters and mausoleum builders were in their heyday. Let us journey back.